


Leaving Albuquerque

by chaosmanor



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: F/M, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:10:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor





	1. The Collective Noun for Me Has Been Left Behind

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
flirty  
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**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [leaving albuquerque](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/leaving+albuquerque)  
  
  
Here's part one of the hugely indulgent bandfic I wrote while hospitalized for ten days. I blame the fever, the sleep deprivation and being cyanotic.

**Leaving Albuquerque**   
Part One: The Collective Noun for Me Has Been Left Behind  
[](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Fandom: Fall Out Boy

 

Notes: Out of politeness to the newer people reading this journal, I feel obliged to make some general statements about the content. I will tell you what's not in the fic: no non-con, character death, violence, incest or underage sex. It contains some material that people sometimes want to be warned for, but I think that will be clear well in advance of the actual scenes.

Lyrics of Yellow Girl belong to me.

***

 

Andy was waiting, at the airport gate, when Suzy walked through the exit, and if there was any surprise in his eyes, it was immediately replaced by delight, and he hugged her quickly.

"Hey," Andy said. "So, long time, huh?"

Suzy hugged Andy back, and found herself grinning as well as blinking hard. "Fuck, yeah. You haven't changed a bit."

Andy laughed, slinging an arm around Suzy's shoulders, his easy affection enough to stop her from changing her mind about the whole thing. "Can't say the same for you. Let's go find your luggage."

At the baggage carousel, while she grabbed her guitar case and pack, Suzy asked the question that had been sitting heavy in her mind, on the flight from New York to Wisconsin, and through every day since Andy's letter had arrived. "Are the others coming too?"

"Joe's here, he drove up early this morning," Andy said. "Pete's flying in later tonight. You didn't really think they'd miss this, did you?"

Suzy shrugged, settling her pack on her back more securely. "It's been a long time. It might have been too long."

Andy's car was an all-terrain monster coated in dirt, the paintwork battered and scraped. Suzy tossed her guitar and pack on the back seat and swung herself into the front passenger seat. "This is kind of excessive, isn't it?" she asked.

"The car?" Andy said. "You haven't yet seen where I'm living these days. Besides, it's modified to run on just about any fuel, as well as batteries. I've got a still, in theory to power the car and the back-up generator, though Joe likes to drink the output."

"Have you really gone off the grid?" Suzy asked. "Like you always wanted to?"

"Right off," Andy said. "I drive into town once a week to check snail mail and email, and I could skip that if I had to. What about you? What are you doing?"

Suzy waited while Andy negotiated his way through the traffic craziness outside the airport, then said, "I'm still making music. I compose for a lot of people these days, but do it all through third party cut offs, a manager who hides me, that sort of thing."

Andy looked at Suzy, and she turned her head to look out of the passenger window. "Fame burned you that badly?"

"Guess so," Suzy said. "Yeah, it did. What about you?"

"I'm still playing a bit, with a local band. It's enough to satisfy the cravings, but not enough to escalate the habit. Joe's got kids and a partner, and he does responsible stuff most of the time. And Pete…"

"I know what Pete's up to," Suzy said. "Amusingly, his label releases my songs occasionally. I sometimes wonder if he knows."

"Pete hasn't got a fucking clue," Andy said. "In fact, we could have that emblazoned across something substantial, like a bridge, or a mountain, because there are no circumstances under which it doesn't apply."

Suzy laughed, and Andy grinned at her.

"Are you bitter?" she asked. "About what happened?"

"I don't do bitter," Andy said. "I do fucking aggrieved. I'm still sure that it's all his fault somehow."

"Not mine?"

Andy glanced at Suzy. "I don't see that you had a lot of choices."

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Suzy said. "Opening these doors again, with no idea what's on the other side. This is scary."

"It's us, and while I agree that used to be scary sometimes, remember we were all friends for years, and that won't have changed."

"Maybe I have, too much," Suzy said.

Andy shook his head. "I'm still seeing the same soul."

The track into Andy's property wasn't even really a track, and both the all-terrain nature of the car and the damaged paintwork made a lot more sense once Andy had plunged the car down creek beds and across gullies, barreling across fields where the wild grasses were taller than the car, then through an abandoned orchard.

"Where are we?" Suzy asked, when Andy rattled the car to a halt beside a barn covered in solar panels, a windmill ticking overhead, with a decrepit bus parked beside it.

"Welcome back to the future," Andy said.

Joe leapt out of the rear bus door and dragged the car's passenger door open. "Suzy!" he shouted, and Suzy found herself jumping out of the car into Joe's arms, then being swung around.

Joe kissed her cheeks and put her back on the ground, and then pinned Suzy in the middle of a three-way hug, between himself and Andy.

"Fuck, guys," she said. "That's not fair."

"What did you expect?" Joe asked. "It's been four years, and you turn up with a fucking ponytail and a hot rack."

Andy said, "Wow, tactless, Joe," and Suzy extracted herself from the tangle of arms.

"It's okay," she said, fighting the urge to cross her arms across her breasts. "Someone was always going to say it, and at least it's out of the way now."

"Well, you were always cute, and now you're really cute," Joe said. "And I can say that this time without having to defend my gender preferences."

Andy had the look he always used to get when Pete was being particularly atrocious, like he was trying to work out whether to call the cops or just go and hide to avoid the impending brawl, and Suzy nodded.

"You can say it, both of you. You knew me before, so I'm probably not going to freak out if someone points out that I used to be Patrick."

Andy nodded, and Joe grinned. "So, about your rack…" Joe said.

"No!" Suzy said. "You cannot even think about my breasts. The closest you'll come to them is if I whisper to you how much they cost."

"They're not real?" Joe asked, sounding disappointed.

"Fuck," Andy said, grabbing the back door of his car and pulling it open. "I'm sorry, Suzy. Not everyone is an idiot, honest." He held out Suzy's pack and guitar. "Want to put your stuff on the bus while I do something to make Joe stop?"

"You live on a bus?" Suzy said, when she climbed up the steps. "You're still living on a fucking bus?!"

"Actually, I live in that building mostly," Andy said, pointing through a bus window at a shack. "The bus is guest accommodation. I drive the bus into the barn for the winter, and move into it if the shack gets lost in the snow."

Suzy put her guitar and pack on one of the bunks and sat down on the edge of it. "I can't believe that we're back on a bus again."

"At least it's not the same bus," Andy said. "Toilet is there, beside the barn. There's a shower in the barn. Hot water is only reliable during daylight."

"Electricity?" Suzy asked. "Or do we all have to go to sleep when the sun goes down?"

"Vanadium batteries," Andy said. "They put out a decent twelve volt supply. I've got some amps and speakers in the barn, so when we jam, we're not restricted to acoustic."

"Excellent idea," Joe said, but Suzy looked up at Andy, and fuck, she wasn't doing a good job of keeping her feelings off her face.

"Jam?" she said. "Andy, you bastard. I had no idea you were intending to do anything as intense as an amplified session. I don't think I can do more than bash an acoustic around a fire."

"We've all got our agendas," Andy said. "I have no idea what Pete's is, or what you want, but Joe and I were hoping for a chance to make some loud music with a couple of our favorite people in the world."

Suzy pushed past Andy, and off the bus. If she stayed, with the two of them and their painful optimism and good memories, she was going to fall apart completely.

Paths led off from the clearing, into the ramshackle orchard, and Suzy plunged down one of them at random. She kept going, through the gnarled apple trees and weeds, until she was sure that no one was following her. Andy wouldn't, but she had to be sure he'd stopped Joe…

The weeds and grass were good cover, when she pushed off the path, and Suzy felt safe enough to sit down. Overhead, the sky was translucent blue, heading into late afternoon perhaps, the shadows deepening. Birds sang, alien sounds, from so long ago, and cicadas hopped from grass stalk to grass stalk.

It was wild and beautiful, and Suzy couldn't remember the last time she'd been anywhere like it, with space, instead of brick walls, between her and the rest of the world.

She sat there long enough to hear Andy's car rattling off, presumably to collect Pete. If seeing Andy and Joe again had been hard, then facing Pete was going to be a thousand times worse. He'd been her best friend, for all those years, until she'd stood trembling in Pete's kitchen, with Andy, Joe and Pete watching her.

She'd walked away from Fall Out Boy, and from all three of them, that day. She'd dumped their partially recorded new CD, thrown away the best fucking job ever, and left the person she loved most in the world, in four minutes in Pete's kitchen.

She'd gotten on a plane, disappeared out of sight completely, and sat for a year in an apartment in Albuquerque, of all the places, and waited. Then she'd written to Pete, and tried to explain. As if she could ever hope to explain something like what she'd done.

When the sun had fallen beneath the trees and the mosquitoes were swarming, Suzy walked back to the clearing.

Joe was sitting beside a lit fire pit, playing his acoustic to himself, but he looked up at Suzy.

"So, I'm an insensitive bastard," Joe said.

"I'd noticed," Suzy said, and she went into the bus and found a sweater and her acoustic.

It felt damned good, sitting out in the open beside a fire and playing Ramones covers with Joe, like it was something they'd done a thousand times before, except Suzy was sure they never had, not with the sky a huge bronze and black dome overhead, the sparks from the fire rising into the darkness.

Andy's car rumbled into the clearing, its headlights swinging away from them, lighting the orchard for a moment, before the engine stopped.

The passenger door exploded open, and Pete threw himself out, into the clearing.

"Suzytrick!" Pete shouted, and Suzy put down her guitar and stood up.

Pete hugged her, squeezing her hard, and he just kept hugging her, so she hung onto him, crying against his shoulder, knowing the wetness on her neck was from him.

"Dinner, Joe, now," Andy said, and Suzy heard a door close a moment later.

"Oh, Suzy," Pete said, pulling back enough to look at Suzy in the firelight. "I've missed you."

He touched Suzy's face, rubbing at the moisture on her skin, then cupping her cheek.

"Wow," he said.

Suzy nodded, managing a wobbly smile. "You look old."

Pete's hair was buzz cut, and even in the firelight, his face had the same haggard look as all the recent publicity photos Suzy had seen.

"I am old. Too old for dramas like this. You don't look old," Pete said. "You look like a fucking princess or something."

A door squeaked, and Joe called out, "Can we come back now? Or are you both still crying?"

"Asshole," Pete called out. "Bring beer." His voice dropped, and his hand pressed against Suzy's cheek more firmly. "Don't disappear without giving us a chance to talk, okay?"

Suzy nodded.

***

Pete put the blanket around Suzy's shoulders and sat beside her, leaning toward the glowing embers of the fire.

"Joe's asleep, and Andy has promised he'll keep his headphones on," Pete said. "If you feel up to talking."

Suzy held her glass up, so the light from the embers shone through the dregs of Andy's home-brewed paint stripper.

"Yeah," she said. "Not so drunk I'll forget the words, or so sober I'll freeze up."

Pete clinked his glass against hers. "I'm glad I'm not keeping Edge, for exactly that reason. When I got your letter, I freaked out. How could I not know this about you? How could you not trust me enough to tell me? I felt like I'd failed you. I had failed you."

"Do you still feel like that?" Suzy asked.

Pete lifted Suzy's ponytail gently, twirling it around his palm and knuckles. "Perhaps. I mostly can't quite believe it's you though. I guess I was still expecting you to look the same, you know, trucker hat and all."

Suzy turned to look at Pete, pulling her hair out of his hand. "I was always like this inside, it's just that no one knew."

"I always thought you were beautiful, just not beautiful like this."

Pete's hand was on Suzy's neck, his fingers rubbing against her skin slowly, and Suzy had to swallow, just to keep breathing.

"I've been so scared of seeing you again," Suzy said. "I guess I was worried you hadn't forgiven me for leaving, or that you hated me."

"You had every reason to think I hated you. I'd made no attempt to find you, not even after you wrote to me. What kind of asshole does that make me? You couldn't have gone far, since Andy found you immediately, once he decided we should have a reunion out here."

"He wrote to my mother," Suzy said. "Enclosing a letter for me. She sent it on."

"See? I'm an asshole for not doing that."

"No, Pete, you're an asshole for not identifying the songs your label has released over the past few years that were written by me," Suzy said.

Pete jerked his hand away from Suzy, staring at her in the firelight. "Oh, fuck. Yellow Girl, you wrote that one. Play, that has to be your guitar riffs. Deep End, too. Fucking hell, I'm clueless."

"Short song titles," Suzy said. "The perfect disguise."

Pete shook his head. "You've paid for my divorces, and I'd like to thank you for that."

"Paid for my surgery too."

Pete swallowed. "Oh. Have you…?"

"I've had facial feminization and my breasts done," Suzy said. "And I've had full reassignment."

"I can't believe you'd do that."

Suzy put her arm around Pete's shoulders. "What you mean is that you're so attached to your own dick, you can't imagine parting with it. Mine was only ever inconvenient. If you want to hear the gruesome details, I can explain how the skin was inverted…"

Pete's mouth was open, horror on his face, so Suzy stopped.

"Or not," she added. "You probably don't want to hear about that."

"No," Pete said. "Just, no. You might be the love of my life, but I can't take that kind of detail."

Two beats of silence, and Pete said, "Fuck."

"Pete?"

Pete was off, away from the fire, stomping across the clearing, rubbing at his hair and face. Suzy reached for the bottle of paint-stripper Andy had left them and poured herself another glass. She filled Pete's glass, too, and carried both glasses over to where Pete was leaning against Andy's car, looking like he wanted to bang his head against the animal rights stickers on the dirt-caked back window.

Away from the fire, the only light was from the stars, and Pete's face was in shadow, but he took the glass Suzy held out.

The grain alcohol was rough, burning Suzy's throat and making her eyes water, but fuck it, her eyes were already watering, and she wasn't up to dealing with the raw truth of how she and Pete felt about each other without something to cauterize the wounds a little.

"I've always loved you like that," Suzy said. "So, you know, don't torture yourself over it."

Pete emptied his glass, gasping a little, then set the glass on the bumper of Andy's car.

"So," he said. "How long have we known each other? How long has this taken us?"

Suzy put her glass beside his. "I make it thirteen years, give or take a bit. But we've not spoken for the past four, so they might not count."

"During those four years I've married again, divorced one and a half times, and had more toxic relationships than I can bear to think of," Pete said. "And you've changed gender. Are you with someone?"

"No," Suzy said. "Resolutely single, apart from brief forays into lesbianism."

Pete groaned. "This is not helping."

"Helping with what?"

"With me feeling like I'm waking up from a four year nightmare," Pete said. "With trying to work out how Patrick, who I loved and adored and kind of wanted, but never pursued, because, fuck no, has turned into someone I'm having major lust issues over, someone I'm throwing myself at."

"Fucker," Suzy said. "Maybe I'm still straight… lesbian, whatever. Maybe I think you're an arrogant, superficial asshole. I'm going to bed, because I can't take any more of Andy's home brew or your craziness."

Whatever emotional crap she'd expected, and she'd played through a stack of scenarios in her head before deciding to accept Andy's invite, she hadn't even considered this one.

The alcohol was buzzing inside her head, when she clambered onto her bunk in her sweats, and she let it take her away, numbing her to sleep.

Someone woke her, stumbling against her bunk, and she groaned and turned her back to them, dragging her blankets with her. Pete, of course, just like whenever they'd been on tour and he'd been feeling bad.

He slid under the blankets behind her, curling up against her. She thought about pointing out that they weren't on tour, and that right then, she didn't want to deal with how Pete was feeling, but it was late, and she was tired.

Pete was warm against her back, his arm around her waist.

She woke again, sunlight streaming into the bus, Pete's hand under her sweats, resting against her belly, his fingertips on her skin sending sparks rushing through her blood.

She rolled onto her back, and found Pete watching her, propped up on one elbow, his eyes unguarded and clear.

"Hey," he said, his voice low, and his hand moved, his fingers spreading out, his palm pushing against her stomach.

The sparks turned to tingles, because fuck, the skin on her belly was hypersensitive.

"You groping me?"

"If I was, I'd be more pro-active about it," Pete said. "I could show you, but you might strangle me or something."

"Confined space, only one of us has testicles," Suzy said. "You do the math."

"Okay," Pete said. "Hadn't thought of that. I won't make any sudden moves, at least not until I find out if you still think I'm a huge ass."

In the daylight, the creases around Pete's eyes were obvious, and Suzy touched the deep groove beside his mouth, making him smile.

"Huge ass," Suzy said. "But, nothing unexpected there, because you always were."

Pete lowered his head, and whispered, "Have you forgiven me for saying that now you're smoking?"

"Always forgive you," Suzy said. "You know that. Does it work both ways? Can you forgive me for what I did?"

"Dearest Pete," Pete said in a whisper. "I'm going to try and explain, if you'll listen to me. You remember right at the beginning--"

Suzy put her fingers on Pete's mouth, stopping him. "You don't need to recite the letter to me. Do you think I don't remember every word I wrote to you?"

"Listen to the words," Pete said. "Listen to what you said to me."

Suzy nodded, and Pete closed his eyes, his lips moving as he recited Suzy's words back to her.

"But an idea wasn't enough, just like nothing else was enough. I had to leave. I talked to therapists, over and over, but it was always the same. Change, or lose the ability to feel anything except pain. Change, because not changing was not living. Change, or die. This is the last time I'll ever sign my name…Patrick."

Suzy could feel the moisture leaking out of her eyes, and Pete's lashes were clumped together when he opened his. So many years of aching and longing, in one paragraph, and she'd do it all over again, in a second.

"How could I not forgive you?" Pete said. "How could I not let you go?"

He kissed her, brushing his lips against hers, and Suzy grabbed his shoulder, stopping him from pulling away, holding their mouths together.

"Fuck," Pete whispered, then Suzy opened her mouth, because this was _Pete_, and her heart felt like it was about to explode with joy.

It was impossible to breathe, or think, or do anything except kiss Pete back, tongues sliding together indecently, Pete's fingers digging into her ribs, his thigh over hers.

When Pete lifted his mouth, licking his bottom lip, Suzy moaned.

"Yeah. Notice, I'm still not groping you," Pete said. "Please notice this."

Pete's hand had moved from Suzy's ribs, and was pushing hair off her face, stroking her forehead, sliding the hair behind her ear.

"I think you could, under the circumstances," Suzy said, because her belly was hot and tight, and her groin ached.

Pete blinked. "I don't, oh damn, want to break you, or this. If I only get one chance every four years, I don't want to mess it up."

"I've pretty much told you how to find me, idiot," Suzy said. "And what I'm doing for work. How hard would it be?"

"Or you could just walk into my offices," Pete said, grinning.

"Where any number of people might recognize me, and there's a whole load of issues I'm not ready to think about. Are you going to let me out of the bunk?" She had the feeling that if she didn't get out of there soon, things were just going to escalate.

"Reluctantly," Pete said, rolling onto his back. "Wanna crawl across me?"

Suzy maneuvered herself up, onto all fours, and slid one knee between Pete's thighs, Pete's hands working under her sweats at the back, finding bare skin. Suzy shuffled her knee across, so she was astride Pete, then lowered herself back down.

Her crotch ground down on Pete's cock through their clothes, and her breasts were squashed against Pete's chest. "Oh, babe," Pete whispered.

"How does that feel?" Suzy asked, because Pete wasn't the only one who could push a little.

"Give me one good reason why we're still dressed."

"Because I'm a virgin, and this is one complicated piece of machinery, and I'm not teaching you to drive it while other people are listening," Suzy said. "And that's two reasons, or possibly three."

"Virgin?" Pete squeaked.

Suzy kissed Pete quickly, then clambered off the bunk, and out into the corridor. "I need a shower and some coffee. You need some quality alone time."

Joe and Andy were sitting on the weeds in the morning sunshine outside the shack, and Joe said, "Coffee's on the stove. Andy might be some clean-living purist, but I brought supplies."

"I was going to shower first," Suzy said.

"I'll show you how to make the shower plumbing work," Andy said, standing up. "Is Pete still asleep?"

"Nah, he's jerking off in my bunk," Suzy said.

"Kinky masturbation sex games, just like the old days," Andy said, pushing the barn door open. "What every band reunion needs."

Suzy stood in the barn doorway, nodding in approval at the contents of the barn. Andy had some serious speaker stacks, and a full drum kit under plastic. "Nice, really nice," she said.

"Wait until you see this, from one drummer to another," Andy said, grabbing the edge of a tarpaulin draped over a mound of… something.

He pulled the tarp aside, and Suzy gasped at the sight of two huge kettle drums. "Fuck, Andy, what do you do with these?"

"A little drumming," Andy said. "There're no neighbors to complain. You want to make some noise later?"

"That jam session I was freaking out about?" Suzy said. "Fuck that, we are going to tear this place apart. This will be the Fall Out Boy gig that ruins our hearing permanently."

Andy grinned. "Sorry, did you say something? Your lips were moving, but I couldn't hear you. So, this shower, you've got ninety seconds of hot water at the most. Don't hang around."

He pushed the stall door open, and pulled a lever, up the wall, making the plumbing gurgle.

"Ninety seconds?" Suzy said. "I can do that."

When Pete eventually emerged from the bus, Suzy was sitting in the sunshine outside the shack, drinking her second mug of coffee, while Joe braided her hair, which apparently he'd had to learn to do for his three year old daughter.

Pete blinked, and disappeared into the shack, coming back a moment later with a mug of coffee.

"Fuck, Suzy," Pete said, crouching down in front of her. "You'll have to excuse me while I objectify you for a moment."

"I did that, and she punched me," Joe said. "I reckon you can get about three seconds staring at the cleavage before she smacks you."

"Fuckers," Suzy said. "Don't make me button my shirt up before we play."

"We're going to play?" Pete asked, looking up from Suzy's cleavage for a moment, to where Andy was hacking slabs of bread off a loaf.

"That's the plan," Andy said.

"I only brought an acoustic," Suzy said. "It's got pickups, but it's hardly going to be a classic sound."

"I brought two electric guitars," Joe said, wrapping an elastic band around the end of Suzy's braid.

"Breakfast first," Andy said, holding out a slab of bread and peanut butter to Suzy. "Then Suzy and I are going to tune the kettle drums."

"Yes!" Pete said. "Kettle drums! You got a recording rig here, Andy?"

"No," Andy said. "Twelve volts. Everyone remember that. It all runs on twelve volts and transformers. When we drain the batteries, we have to stop while they recharge from the panels."

"I can hot wire something to record," Suzy said. "I've got a laptop with me, already set up for multiple inputs, and it's all only data anyway. I'll have to massage the life out of it all later though, to get anything solid out of it."

Andy stood up, bread in his hand, and he was grinning. "Let's go torture some drums."

The barn was dusty, with the morning sun shining through the open doors. Tuning the kettle drums was great fun, involving guess work with the tuning screws, then Andy rubbing the mallet across the skin and listening to the harmonics of the note.

When the two drums were both tuned, Andy handed one set of mallets to Suzy, and took the other for himself.

She let him go first, a rolling beat, building in volume, then picked up the beat behind him, following along, letting her gut tell her when the frequencies were right, and the beat was throbbing between the two drums, and between her temples, right inside her head.

They held it for a few bars, then Andy dropped out, and Suzy halved the tempo, banging the skin hard, getting the sound to resonate in the barn, then letting it fade, before damping the skin with her hand.

"And that is why Fall Out Boy has two drummers," Andy said, hugging Suzy.

When Suzy looked up, Pete and Joe were standing in the door of the barn, backlit by the morning sun, and Joe had his arm around Pete's shoulders, hugging him.

"Tune guitars," Suzy said, pointing at Joe and Pete. "While I work out how to get my laptop to talk to at least one of these antiquated amps. And if anyone points out that Andy just used the present tense for FOB, I'm going to lose it."

No one stopped Suzy, when she went to the bus to retrieve her laptop, and she sat in the front lounge while it booted, trying to get her head, and her heart, around what was happening. If she was going to stop the process, it needed to be right at that moment, before she found herself in another kitchen, shaking as she broke four people's dreams.

"Suzy?" Andy said, and she looked up at him, where he stood in the bus doorway. "I've been delegated to say that we don't have to do this. If you just want to hang around and talk, or make out with Pete, or whatever, we're all fine with that, especially Pete for the bit that involves him. This was never supposed to be about FOB, it was supposed to be about the four of us as people, but especially about you."

"But?" Suzy asked.

"But for the three of us, FOB never ended, and the dream of you coming back has always been with us."

"Can we do this, with no other expectations?" Suzy asked. "I really want to play with you all again, but that might be all that ever happens."

Andy nodded. "I'll go tell the others."

Suzy set her laptop up a respectable distance from any of the amps, and she and Joe spent a few minutes splicing cabling, running multiple inputs from the amps, while Andy and Pete persuaded mikes to stay on stands and, in Andy's case, kicked the amps in the right places to get them to work.

"Andy?" Suzy called out, watching the rhythm guitar sound check on her laptop screen.

"What?" Andy said, bent over his drum kit, tuning the skin of the floor tom.

"You're wealthy, right? Like the rest of us? You didn't sign some shitty contract at the beginning that only gave you five percent of the take?"

"I am a man of considerable personal fortune," Andy said. "Why? Do you need a loan?"

"No," Suzy said. "I was just wondering why you'd never bought anything useful, like, oh, a roll of gaffer tape, or a pair of needle nose pliers."

"I had gaffer tape once," Andy said. "Then I covered the barn in solar panels. What do you think is keeping all the panels up?"

"Everyone, send Andy essential sound gear for his birthday," Suzy said.

Pete, who was crawling around in the dirt in front of the drum kit, trying to seat a mike, said, "The Sex Pistols stole all their mikes from David Bowie. Who would you like me to steal yours from, Andy?"

Andy stomped the pedal for the bass drum, right beside Pete's head.

"Ow!" Pete said. "Just for that, you're getting Celine Dion's."

Joe adjusted the gain on his amp, and Suzy held up her hand at the next check. "You're done, Joe. Isn't Celine Dion dead?"

"Yes, and she's still playing Vegas," Pete said knowledgeably. "The rumors are divided evenly between 'zombie' and 'vampire'. I'll raid her sound gear next time I'm out there."

"Okay, Andy, let's see how useless the mike is," Suzy said.

Pete scrambled away from the kit, just as Andy launched into his test drill, crouching down behind Suzy, watching the screen over her shoulder.

"Hi there," he said, against her ear. "Is there a mike around here, or can I talk dirty to you?"

"There's a mike behind you," Suzy said. "I'd keep it only moderately filthy. Let's not scar Joe's psyche any more than it already is."

"I'm not looking at the screen, I'm actually checking out your breasts," Pete whispered. "I can see right down…"

Suzy moved, rounding her shoulders a little so the tank top under her shirt gaped, and Pete whimpered. "Fuck, I can't believe how hot you are."

Suzy turned her head, so her mouth was against Pete's cheek, stubble rubbing her lips, and Joe said, "Either sound check, or go and have sex, okay? Don't try and do both at once."

Pete stood up and rearranged himself. "So, Andy, does the nearest town have a motel?"

Suzy hid her face in her hands, and Andy said, "Sure. Just let me know, and I'll drive you in. Joe and I can heckle all the way through the drive. Right, Joe?"

"Absolutely. I've been waiting thirteen years for you two to hook up, and I'm not missing out on the preliminary embarrassment. The suspense is killing me, and I'm not one of the people getting laid. I might need to sleep with Andy, just to celebrate."

"No chance," Andy said. "If I was ever going to make that mistake, I would have done it when you were young and pretty."

"Sound check?" Suzy said hopefully. "Please?"

"Voice check for you?" Pete said, and Suzy looked up at him. Damn, that was a mistake, because Pete still wore his jeans painted on, and while she'd spent years ignoring him wandering around with a hard-on under denim, this was the first time she'd put it there.

"Okay," Suzy said, and if her voice was higher than normal, then only she knew.

"What's your voice like?" Pete asked, while Suzy adjusted the mike stand, lowering the mike.

"Range is the same, but the upper notes are much clearer," Suzy said. "Timbre is different. In general, not touring for four years was a good idea. No more Tom Waits covers for me, but I do a classy Carole King these days."

Suzy switched the mike on, and Pete crouched in front of the laptop. Joe was tuning another guitar, presumably for her, Andy was fussing over his kit, and it was just like every other sound check they'd ever done.

Only it wasn't.

"I'm not your sunshine," Suzy sang, closing her eyes. "I'm not your moon in the sky. I'm not the daffodil, not the petal, not the pollen, can't you see? I'm a yellow girl, another yellow girl, hiding in the crowd. I'm a yellow girl, because that's all I can be."

When she'd finished the chorus and opened her eyes, Pete, Andy and Joe were all standing and staring at her.

She stepped back from the mike and switched it off, and Andy said, "Um, wow. You sing it better than Charyis does. Pete, sack Charyis from your label."

"Levels?" Suzy asked Pete.

"Not a fucking clue," Pete said. "Sorry, having something of an emotional crisis here."

Suzy rolled her eyes and knelt down to check the laptop screen herself. "That was fine. The other guitars next?"

Andy stood beside Suzy, sneakers scuffing the dirt. "I'll do yours, if you want to take Pete outside and apply some kind of first aid, because he's not getting it together."

Suzy stood up and looked over at Pete, who hadn't moved. "Okay."

He let her lead him outside, blinking into the daylight. Suzy leaned against the side of the barn. "Not dealing?" she asked.

He nodded. "I can, um, tell you the first week sales for Yellow Girl. And the total sales to date. I can break them down, too, into US, total North American, and international; and download versus third party sales. I can tell you how the numbers split out for all the earners, and how many plays the video clip has had on MTV. I can tell you what the marketing plan for Charyis is, how we're packaging her album, where she's appearing for the next month. I can tell you we're using Yellow Girl as the call-waiting tune at the office, at the moment. And that it was written, lyrics and music, by some genius called S. Monroe, who's also provided four other tracks for the album."

"And?" Suzy asked.

Pete looked at her. "And I had no fucking idea what the song meant, not even last night, when I realised you'd written it. Not until you sang the chorus."

Suzy wound her arms around Pete's neck and kissed him, and she could hear Joe playing chords, and Andy swearing at the amp. "One day, I'll tell you about the Albuquerque songs. Not now, because we've got two minutes, at the most. Want to see how far we can get in that time?"

"We can get to paradise in two minutes." Pete pushed her against the barn door, making it clang against the barn, his mouth jammed against hers, his knee between her legs, thigh rubbing her crotch, and Suzy kissed back hard, her lips stinging.

"C'mon," she said, when Pete moved his mouth to her neck, sucking at the skin. "Gimme more."

"You want more?" he rasped, and his hand pushed under her shirt and tank top, up across her ribs, to her bra.

"Oh, fuck," Suzy whispered, and Pete's hand cupped her breast, through lace, squeezing gently, lifting the weight, his thumb rubbing at her nipple.

Pete's mouth moved to her ear. "Fuck, you're perfect… I'm going to fucking come in my jeans like a kid… Wanna fuck you, wanna slide my cock into your pussy… wanna eat you out, make you come so hard… wanna see you sucking my cock…"

Suzy ground against Pete's thigh, gritting her teeth at the abrasion, jamming a hand between them to find the ridge of Pete's cock through denim. "So turned on," she whispered. "Fuck, want your mouth on me… Want to--"

The kettle drums boomed, slow and steady, and decidedly impatient.

"Fuck," Suzy said, banging her head back against the barn door. "I think that's a message for us."

"They can wait. Do you think they've got the sense not to go looking for us?"

Suzy flicked the top button of Pete's jeans undone. "The drums are a good sign. Against Andy's car?"

Pete nodded.

With Pete leaning against the far side of the car, Suzy undid the fly of his jeans, and he pushed them down his hips far enough for the hard length of his cock to be visible through his underwear.

"I've not done this before," Suzy said, as she dropped to her knees. "Just so you know…"

Pete touched her cheek. "Oh, don't worry. All it will take is looking down at your face."

Pete's breath caught, when Suzy pulled his cock free, and he said, "Yeah," with a sound of deep satisfaction at the first touch of her mouth.

It wasn't difficult, letting his cock slide into her mouth, sucking it as he pulled it back out again, with his hands in her hair, guiding each stroke. Once she was sure that she wasn't going to choke or retch, she looked up, and he was staring down at her, mouth open as he gasped.

His fingers on her scalp tightened, and he held her head still, pulled back so just the head of his cock was in her mouth, and he was coming, hot and almost-sweet, making her swallow hard and keep swallowing.

He slid down onto his knees, pulling them both down into the dirt, rolling Suzy onto her back, kissing her and pushing her tank top up.

"Just for a moment," he said, and Suzy nodded.

Pete's hands were reverent, stroking her belly, where the flesh curved, then moving up and pulling the lace of her bra aside, exposing the milk-white skin of her breast, full and round, and her deep pink nipple.

The feel of Pete's mouth on her nipple, licking, then rubbing lips across the skin, made her gasp.

"Oh, fuck," Pete whispered, looking up at Suzy. "Can I make you come like this?"

Suzy shook her head. "You can make it up to me later."

The kettle drums had stopped, and Suzy poked Pete in the shoulder. "Let's go play."

Pete tucked himself back in, then did his jeans up, grinning. "Just like the old days, a blow job before rehearsal."

He stood up and held a hand out to pull Suzy to her feet. Suzy arranged her breast in her bra, and straightened her clothes. "Maybe in your universe, but I never scored like this."

Pete shrugged. "Take a tip from a veteran then, and brush off the knees of your jeans."

"Fuck you," Suzy said, but she wiped the dust off her jeans.

Suzy walked back into the barn and said, "Pete found his equilibrium. You wouldn't believe where he keeps it." She shrugged off her shirt and tossed it onto an amp, grabbed the bottle of water she'd left beside her laptop, and set the laptop to burn.

"So, what does everyone remember the chords for?" Pete asked, as Suzy slid the strap of Joe's spare guitar over her head, and lifted her braid out of the way for Pete to shorten the strap.

"Everything," Suzy said. "Every song."

The gear was set up in a circle, facing inwards, with Suzy buffering the amps and laptop from Joe and Pete's more extreme exertions.

"You call," Pete said.

"Sugar," Suzy said, and Andy beamed and twirled his sticks, launching into the intro, Pete behind him on the bass. Suzy and Joe were there, perfectly in synch, and it sounded so fucking good, then Suzy sang, "Am I more than you bargained for…"

The speakers put out more than enough sound, and Joe and Pete were throwing themselves around the barn while Andy thrashed his kit. Suzy sang, hard as she could, letting her new voice do what it wanted, higher and clearer than she used to, but she could hear how true it all was, how much they all belonged together.

They played for an hour before Andy's home made electrical system ran out of juice. Suzy shut down the laptop, saving the session, and sat under the awning beside Andy's shack, beer in her hand, watching Joe and Andy pour home brew into the generator that was Andy's winter back-up power source.

"Don't use it all," Joe said. "We're going to need some tonight."

"We can play again sooner with the generator running," Andy pointed out. "So give me the fucking drum. You can buy some liquor when we take Suzy and Pete to their honeymoon."

Pete sat beside Suzy, on the grass. "Andy's so damned efficient. How come we never knew this when we were touring?"

"We did," Suzy said. "That's why he was in charge of mornings, and gas money, and things like that."

The generator hummed, finally, and Andy sprawled on the grass, Joe collapsing beside him a moment later, beer in his hand.

"Beer is warm," Joe complained.

"Batteries were drained," Andy said. "Means the fridge shut down for a while. Stop whining."

"So?" Pete said. "How do we sound?"

"As good as we ever did," Joe said. "Unpolished, of course, but we're all better musos now, or less trashed, in my case. Why?"

"Fall Out Boy, The Barn Sessions. Limited Edition, no images of the band on the packaging. I'll underwrite, Suzy can produce. Go on, think of This Ain't A Scene, with kettle drums."

"Pete?" Suzy said. "What happened to 'no pressure'?"

"You sound fucking amazing," Andy said. "Better than you ever did before, which is saying something. I think Pete is getting carried away with that, and that you should lean over and smack him."

"It can't happen. Patrick doesn't exist anymore," Suzy said. "How are you going to get around that?"

"Doesn't exist?" Pete said. "Where are your FOB residuals going then?"

"There's a Patrick Stump incorporated body, for financial purposes, but there's no person behind it now. If you do anything to make someone poke at my legal status, you threaten my privacy. Are you not getting this, Pete? I didn't disappear completely for four years on a whim."

"I won't be part of anything that Suzy isn't comfortable with," Andy said. "Which deadlocks the vote, if we take this to a count."

Suzy flashed a smile at Andy, who grinned back at her.

"Name your terms, Suzy," Pete said, resting a hand on her knee. "Like Andy said, you're better than you've ever been, and I'm just an obsessive label manager who'd love to share how we sound now."

"This is terrifying," Suzy said. "Can you imagine how scared of discovery I am? It's taken me four years to get secure enough to be able to face the three of you, how the fuck am I supposed to face the world?"

"With dignity," Andy said. "With the three of us solidly behind you--Pete in the dirtiest way possible, of course. A simple, restrained press statement, not written by Pete or Joe, saying you're now Suzy, but that we're still FOB. Fuck the world."

Joe nodded. "Yeah. Like that."

Pete laid his head down in Suzy's lap and looked up at her pleadingly. "No touring, no public appearances, just a studio band. Or a barn band, at the moment."

Suzy touched Pete's hair, ruffling it the wrong way, so it stuck up even more. "I'm not making that kind of decision in a hurry. Let's just play, and find out if we can still do this."

The first nuzzle of Pete's mouth against Suzy's belly was gentle, then he nipped at her skin through her tank top, making her shout and smack at him. He bit harder, and she toppled backwards, pulling him with her.

Pete was taller and stronger, and pinned her down, kissing her, and Andy said, "Well, I could check to see if the batteries have picked up some charge."

"I was going to watch," Joe said. "It's kind of hot. Trouble is, then we have to put up with the whole ugly Pete-has-an-erection thing."

"Makes me a little nostalgic," Andy said. "Do you remember when Pete lost his only pair of jeans to that girl?"

"How could I forget?" Joe said. "I still can't believe that the cops--"

"Enough!" Pete said, twisting his neck to glare at Joe. "Or we'll talk about the time you got a bad batch of weed, and we had to cancel the show."

Suzy shoved at Pete, dislodging him and sitting up. "Go and check the batteries, Andy, quickly, before we revisit What Went Wrong in 03."

"No way do I want to talk about that," Andy said, scrambling to his feet. "I was driving."

***


	2. The City's Hollow and I'm a Pebble

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [leaving albuquerque](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/leaving+albuquerque)  
  
  
 

**Leaving Albuquerque**  
Part Two: The City's Hollow and I'm a Pebble  
[](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

 

Once Andy had hit the sealed road, the car's headlights flickering though the rain, Pete undid his seatbelt and slid across the backseat, his arm around Suzy's shoulders.

Joe interrupted the chorus of Living on a Prayer that he and Andy were butchering to turn his head around and shout, "Can see you!" over the music pounding out of the stereo.

Suzy flipped a finger at Joe, who grinned at her and turned back to face the front of the car.

Pete's hand touched her chin, turning her to face him, and his mouth covered hers, meltingly gentle, kissing her slowly, fingers drifting down her neck, stroking her skin.

The music stopped, and Suzy was suddenly desperately aware that both she and Pete were moaning.

Pete turned his head and said, "Put it back on. You really don't want to hear this."

"Get a room," Andy said.

"And we've spent years listening to you," Joe said.

The sound of a zip being undone was loud, even over the hum of tires on the road, and the stereo switched back on suddenly.

Pete did his fly back up, laughing against Suzy's neck, before kissing her again.

Andy parked the car in front of the motel, and said, "How about I go book the room? Let's not have Pete-Wentz-and-a-mystery-blond stories starting, not tonight."

"Thanks," Pete said. "I hadn't thought of that."

"I love you," Suzy called out, as Andy got out of the car.

Andy looked in through the open driver's door briefly to say, "If it doesn't work out with Pete…"

"What about me?" Joe asked, looking back over the seat. "Do you love me too?"

"Love you too," Suzy said. "But I'm not sharing you with your missus, no matter how cool she is."

Joe frowned. "The two of you would run away together anyway, leaving me with the rug rats."

Andy came back, room keycard in his hand. "I know the kid on reception, through the band. He would have recognized Pete instantly. Here's your key, go and get funky together, and we'll pick you up at ten tomorrow morning."

Suzy paused in the car park, pack over her shoulder, and watched Andy's car go. "C'mon," Pete said, arm around her waist.

In the bathroom of the motel room, Pete stood Suzy in front of the mirror, looking over her shoulder. "I want to watch your face," he said, sliding her jacket down her arms. "And I want you to see mine." Her shirt fell to the floor, and he slid his palms down her arms, cupping her elbows. "I missed you, every moment you were gone," he said, lifting the bottom of her tank top up, pulling it over her head.

In the mirror, Pete met Suzy's gaze, then he pressed his mouth against her shoulder and slid his hands between them, to find the clasp of her bra. He pushed fingers under the elastic, once it was undone, freeing the band, pulling it off her, and his hands were gentle on her breasts.

"I think…" Suzy said, her voice trembling. "I think you might have seen inside me, right from the start. I think you always knew, about everything."

Pete smiled, and Suzy waited for the self-deprecating throwaway line from him, but it didn't come. "Maybe, but I didn't wait well," he said, instead. "And I didn't come looking for you, like I could have. But we're here now, and that's enough."

He touched her belly, pressing into the flesh, then undid the button of her jeans, and unzipped them. When Suzy looked up, at the reflection, Pete was smiling at her, and she stopped being nervous. She wasn't trying to pass, there was no need to worry.

Pete pushed her jeans down, so they bunched around her ankles, then knelt down behind her, his breath hot across her lower back. His teeth scraped across skin, and he gripped the elastic of her underpants in his teeth, and pulled them down, fingers hooked into the waist.

The edge of the hand basin was cold, but reassuringly solid, when Suzy grabbed it to steady herself. Pete's hands slid back up her legs, behind her knees, one around the front of her thigh, the other between her legs from behind.

When Pete was standing again, his head against hers, he said, "Talk to me, babe, tell me how to touch you."

The fingers between Suzy's thighs fluttered up, against her labia, and she spread her legs as wide as her jeans would let her. "Promise you won't freak out."

"Not freaking," Pete said. "Promise. Just tell me what to do."

"No feeling in my clit," Suzy said. "The nerve graft didn't take, it's cosmetic only. So, no magic button, it's all a slow build. There're good things, inside me, but I've never been fucked, so I don't know how that all works with someone else."

"Virgin," Pete said. "Fuck. I don't think I've been with a virgin since I was fifteen. What else?"

"Have to use lube. Lots of lube, for everything. And when I come, I, um, get wet."

"Wet is good, and I've got lube with me," Pete said. "Where do you like to be touched?"

"Breasts, belly, thighs," Suzy said. "It made me ache, waking up with your hand on me this morning."

The hand on Suzy's thigh moved, the fingers pressing her pubic bone, the heel of the hand pushing against her belly. "Are you aching now?"

"More than aching, it's burning."

Pete's face was hidden against Suzy's neck, but when he lifted it, and looked at her in the mirror, there was so much desire there that breathing was impossible for a moment.

"Bed," Pete said.

He dragged the bedding off the motel bed, dumping the blankets and sheet on the floor, then piled the pillows at the head of the bed, while Suzy undid her sneakers and pulled her jeans off.

"Sit up there," Pete said, and Suzy propped herself on the pillows while Pete dug through his bag, then pulled his boots off.

He tossed the lube and condoms on the bed, up close to Suzy, then dragged his T-shirt off.

"Aren't you over-dressed?" Suzy asked, watching Pete crawl up the bed, still wearing his jeans.

Pete's hands touched Suzy's knees, parting them. "If you could see what I can…" He looked up at Suzy. "The jeans are guaranteeing I slow down, wait for you."

Suzy touched Pete's cheek, hand trembling.

"If you need to tell me anything, you can say whatever you want," Pete said.

"If you call me by the wrong name, I'll humiliate you in front of the others," Suzy said.

Pete grinned. "Gotcha."

"Is this real?" Suzy asked.

The lips against her mouth felt solid, and Pete whispered, "It better be real."

He knelt back on the bed, sliding his hands up her thighs, leaning forward to kiss her belly, trailing his mouth down.

Gentle fingers, then a tongue, and Suzy closed her eyes and gasped, because it felt unbearably good, hot and taut. The idea that it was Pete, that it was his mouth, was almost more than she could take, scorching inside her head, so she couldn't have stopped the noises she was making, even if they'd been on the bus.

The tightness started, inside her belly, and she opened her eyes and looked down at Pete. "Fingers, oh fuck, inside me," she gasped.

Pete looked up, mouth open, lips and chin shining with spit, and he nodded and grabbed for the tube. Lube, on his hand, and he slid a finger into her slowly. "Like that?"

"More," Suzy said, and she pressed her palm against her belly, pushing down.

The feelings inside her moved, as Pete pushed his fingers up, and she fell over the edge, clamping thighs around Pete's hand, her whole groin pulsing, wetness gushing from her, arching up off the bed, then falling back shuddering.

When she opened her eyes, Pete was staring at her, something like wonder on his face. He slid his fingers out of her slowly and lifted his arm to his mouth, licking at the fluid trickling down his forearm, across his tattoos.

"Oh," Suzy whispered, and Pete crawled up, across her, to kiss her.

"Please?" Pete said, and she could feel his hand between them, undoing his jeans.

"Yeah, want to feel you."

Pete slid off the bed, and peeled off his jeans, then rolled on a condom. "So hard for you," he said, reaching for the lube and kneeling on the bed. "I'm going to explode, just at the first touch."

He grabbed Suzy's hips and pulled her down the bed further, then lowered himself over her. "We can get clever with positions later," he murmured. "I promise."

The head of his cock, cool with lube, nudged against her, and Suzy stared at Pete's face, his tongue protruding between his teeth, his eyes unfocussed. He pushed in, gentle and slow, until he was deep inside her, and she was full.

"Pete?" she whispered, grabbing at his back, pushing down on the feelings, the burning rushing through her.

"What? Does it hurt?" Pete asked, sounding strained.

"No, fuck, no… Quick, it's starting, inside me, again."

Pete groaned, deep and desperate, and pulled back, then rocked into her. "Like that? Is that right?"

She couldn't answer, was only vaguely aware that she was clawing at Pete's back with one hand while pushing the other one against her belly, because each thrust sent a wave of fire through her. She could hear herself yelling, hear Pete too, the bed crashing against the wall, then her body spasmed, blindingly intensely, and she could feel Pete losing control, jerking into her, and hear him shouting.

Pete held her, arms wrapped around her, and he pressed kisses to her face. "Don't cry, Suzy," he whispered. "Please don't cry. Does it hurt? Please, babe, tell me."

It took time, being held, before Suzy could even begin to speak. "Doesn't hurt," she said, against Pete's shoulder. "Maybe a bit raw. I just feel… shattered."

"Good, or bad?" Pete asked, his hand settling on the back of her neck, body warm against hers.

"Good. Yeah, more than good."

Pete sighed, and Suzy could feel tension drop out of his muscles. "Good. I'm not letting go of you, Suzy. Not at the end of this weekend, not ever. If you disappear, I can't just let you go again."

Suzy lifted her head, to look at Pete's face. "What do you want?"

"You, anyway I can get you, and all the time."

He meant it, meant it all, that was obvious from the steadiness of his gaze, and the way his fingertips touched her lips.

"One fuck, and you're certain?" Suzy asked.

"I'm happy to fuck a few more times, if it will help convince you."

Lying in Pete's arms, with him laughing, Suzy could share his optimism, but she made herself think, about the world outside.

"You know what you're asking me, don't you?" she said.

"I thought I was asking you to share long nights of hot sex," Pete said. "At least, that's what's on my mind."

"You're asking me to risk being seen in the one context where I could be identified. Andy had to check us in here, your face is so well known, and we're in fucking Wisconsin. How many times will I be photographed with you before someone says, 'Doesn't Pete's new girl look a bit like that guy that used to sing with him?'?"

"You've stayed invisible until now," Pete said. "Can't we stay that way? I don't have to be a media slut, I can shut up occasionally."

"I'm invisible because I'm ordinary. I live in a one bedroom apartment in New York and catch the subway everywhere. I drink coffee from Starbucks, and fly economy to Chicago to see my mom every few weeks. I buy off-the-rack clothes and watch TV in the evenings. You're…"

"Brash and loud?" Pete suggested. "Conspicuous?"

"I think you're being a little too kind to yourself," Suzy said dryly. "I just don't think it's realistic to think that, even if you start hanging out with me in New York and acting like an adult, you're not going to be recognized, and photographed eventually."

"Do you want to go somewhere else in the world? I've got kids in LA, but we could go to somewhere within an easy plane ride of them, like, um, Panama."

Suzy laughed, she couldn't help it. "Panama? Seriously? Couldn't we go to somewhere sane, like British Columbia instead?"

Pete grinned. "Okay, an island then, near Vancouver."

With Pete's skin against hers, Suzy let herself look at the options, and what might happen if she left her safely anonymous life.

"Give me a little time, okay? There might be another answer, one that doesn't involve moving to somewhere where either drug-runners retire, or it rains all the time."

"Does it still have the sex?" Pete asked. "Because that's important."

Suzy stretched her legs experimentally, feeling the twinges through her hips, along with the deep, buzzing contentment. "Yeah, it does."

Later, Suzy hung onto the faucets of the hand basin, the edge of the bowl digging into her belly, and watched their faces while Pete eased into her from behind. Pete's was twisted with concentration, his eyes half-closed, mouth open in bliss. Her own was almost unrecognizable, flushed, swollen-lipped, dilated pupils, every line softened by happiness.

Then Pete pushed into her hard, making her gasp as heat stabbed through her groin, and he wrapped his arms securely around her ribs and waist, the brown of his skin and black of his tattoos startling against her pink and cream skin.

Pete lifted himself up, on his toes a little, while he was deep inside Suzy, and Suzy would have buckled forward if he hadn't been holding her. "Gonna come?" Pete asked, over the hum of the bathroom ventilation fan and the pounding of blood in Suzy's ears. "Does that make you wanna come?"

Suzy shook the faucets, pinned between the edge of the basin and Pete's body, and Pete moved on the balls of his feet, shoving his cock harder inside her. Suzy's body twisted and pulsed, and she was coming, her moans echoing off the tiled walls of the bathroom, moisture trickling down her thighs.

Pete let go of her ribs, grabbing her hips and lowering himself down, and he fucked her, cock jabbing into her. Watching Pete's face in the mirror while he came, watching him lose control, was almost as good as coming herself.

 

***

Pete woke Suzy before dawn, kisses against her shoulder, hand on her breasts, then belly. Then he slid into her, moving slowly and carefully, warm and heavy over her, mouth covering hers.

In the dark room, only the digital clock turned to face the wall flickering light, it felt substantial for the first time. This was Pete, and this was her, and they had no need to hide anything from each other. She came gradually, in gentle waves, not fighting her body, then stroked Pete's back and neck while he came.

***

"At least you both don't stink," Andy said, when Suzy closed the car door. "I was a bit worried, having seen the room."

"Showers," Pete said. "I promise we've both had showers."

"Then there was the look on the receptionist's face when I handed back the keycard. I think the kid was trying to work out why I'd driven into town and rented a room to spend the night fucking loudly when I had a perfectly good shack of my own," Andy said.

"Did you really trash the room?" Joe asked, while Andy reversed out of the car bay.

"I wouldn't call it trashed," Pete said.

"It was trashed," Suzy said. "Let me know if the motel hits your credit card for any extra charges, Andy."

"Absolutely," Andy said. "I don't mind paying for the room for you, but if you've ruined the plumbing or something, you can pay me back."

Pete smiled at Suzy. He'd not flushed the condoms, and he'd not left them behind. They were in a plastic bag in his pack, until he could find somewhere safe to ditch them, possibly into Andy's plumbing. Suzy had never, at any stage, had the kind of lifestyle that made it dangerous to leave used condoms in a hotel rubbish bin, and she found Pete's paranoia kind of endearing.

"Now when a motel sends me a damages bill, it's because the kids have put Cheetos into the DVD player," Joe said. "I feel so grown up."

"You could not feed the brats Cheetos," Andy said. "And stick to DVD player friendly-snacks while traveling."

Suzy took Pete's hand, on the backseat. Pete looked half-asleep still, hair damp from the shower, clothes crumpled, yawning to himself. Suzy felt like that too; just-showered, mouth tasting of toothpaste, desperately lacking in coffee and sleep, and so fucking happy.

At Andy's shack, sitting at his kitchen table, coffee mug in her hands, she said, "Can we all talk?"

Andy put the plate of waffles he'd just heated up on the table. "Sure, Suzy. Where's Pete? And Joe was here a moment ago."

Joe was the last to the table, hair dripping from the shower, towel around his shoulders. "Wassup?" he asked, taking a waffle.

"Band meeting," Suzy said.

"Yes!" Pete shouted.

"Shut up," Suzy said. "It's been an intense couple of days for me. Um, pretty much life-changing. I came out here terrified, not even sure that I'd cope for more than a couple of hours."

"I'm glad you were brave enough to stay," Andy said.

Suzy looked at Pete, who nodded. "So, yeah, and I hadn't expected the thing with Pete to happen, but it feels real and solid."

She paused, and the other three watched her.

"Damn," Suzy said. "I love all of you, and that's a yes to the Barn Sessions album, and working out what to do next with FOB."

Pete shouted, right in Suzy's ear, dragging her out of her chair, and Andy picked her up and swung her around, while Joe did leaping spins around Andy's tiny kitchen, colliding with chairs and the fridge, tipping over coffee cups and breaking a plate.

Andy put Suzy's feet back down, and grabbed her hand, dragging her out into the rain, and to the barn, Pete and Joe hauling the doors open, letting watery light in. The kettle drums were uncovered, from the day before, and Andy handed Suzy a set of mallets, and held the other set.

"Go, girl," he said.

Suzy hit the drum in front of her hard, the note booming through the barn, then started a roll, pounding the kettle drum with all her strength. Andy beat the other drum, harder and louder, the noise filling the barn, booming out into the rain, wild and crazy, like everything else that weekend had been.

Andy might be fit and strong, but Suzy could only keep the pace up for a few minutes, before she threw the mallets down on the drum and collapsed laughing and sweating against Pete, who hugged her.

When Andy had finished, and the barn was quiet again, Suzy's ears were ringing, and she had to work not to shout when she said, "I still need to talk to you all, you bastards. And I want more coffee, because Joe spilled mine."

Back at the kitchen table, the cold waffles binned and a fresh batch on the table, Suzy looked at the grins on the faces of the others. "Not meaning to ruin your fun, but this is not going to be easy. The only way to take away the fear of discovery is to come out, and doing it is going to make me a wreck. You can thank Pete for this, because if he hadn't been part of the deal, I would have stayed safe and hidden. But, realistically, that's not possible."

"You know we'll be there for you," Andy said.

"What I'm asking for is a little time first," Suzy said. "It will take a while, to come back here with decent sound gear to fill the gaps, and for me to do production, anyway. I'd like us to put together some kind of press release, ready for the album. Pete? Do you have a PR agent? Someone trustworthy?"

"I'd rather use someone else, separate from my existing businesses," Pete said. "I can look around, find the right person. Suzy, I'm over-whelmed you're doing this. I didn't really want to move to Panama."

Suzy shrugged. "So I have to spend a few days in misery, then I get to be in FOB again, and I get you. I'm considering an induced coma for those days."

"Oh, no, don't do that," Joe said. "Waking up is ugly."

"Medically induced coma," Suzy qualified. "I figured I could lock myself in my apartment, disconnect the net and turn off all the phones, until someone told me it was over. Then never leave the building again."

"You can sit it out here," Andy said. "There's no cell phone reception, and no one will ever find you. We can leave Joe and Pete to deal with the drama."

"Thanks, Andy, I'll do that if I can," Suzy said. "Is this what everyone wants? Do you all want to face this?"

Pete squeezed Suzy's hand, and his eyes were shining with delight. "Fuck, yeah. When we've done the Barn Sessions, I've got four year's worth of notebooks waiting for you."

Suzy looked at Andy and Joe.

Joe grinned. "Hell, yes. Restart FOB, but without the touring? That's perfect. If we were hitting the road again, the missus would be unhappy. But if we're just recording, she'll be delighted. I'll promise her another baby, and something outrageously expensive with my share of Barn Sessions, and it will all be good."

Andy nodded. "I think we've all been waiting for you, Suzy. Just waiting for you to come back."

"Then let's go drain Andy's fancy vanadium batteries, then pour whisky into the generator so we can keep playing," Suzy said.

"No!" Joe said. "Not the whisky!"

"Relax," Andy said. "I bought a drum of ethanol in town. I could just imagine all of you disappearing this evening, having used all the electricity, eaten the food and drunk the still dry, leaving me with nothing, so I stocked up."

***

At the airport, Suzy leaned forward, between the car seats. "Want to let me out here, Andy?"

"Okay," Andy said, pulling the car into the set down area in front of the car park. "I'll, um, just loiter outside the car for a bit then."

They'd dropped Joe at his car, which he'd left in the town closest to Andy's place, so it was just Pete in the car, once Andy closed his door and wandered up the sidewalk.

Pete pulled Suzy close. "I'll see you in New York, end of the week," he said. "We can be ordinary together."

Suzy nodded, and rested her face against Pete's. "I need to go, before this gets any harder."

Pete kissed her briefly, then Suzy pulled away, opening the door and climbing out, grabbing her pack and guitar.

She walked past Andy, towards the airport entrance, but he didn't try and stop her to say goodbye. She'd be back soon enough, carrying the right equipment to record the kettle drums, and he'd understand anyway.

At the airline desk, she took a deep breath and said, "One seat, next available flight to Chicago." Sometimes, the only possible thing to do was to go home to Mom, just for a while.

***

Suzy paused the sequence of bars she was working on and reached for the phone. "Hmm?" she said distractedly. There weren't a lot of options for people that would phone her, and none of them would expect politeness, not during work hours.

"Suzy," Pete said. "Shit, Suzy. I don't know if you want to look or not, but there're photos of us."

"What? When?" Suzy said, pushing her office chair across the room, to her laptop. Her serious processor was isolated from the net, for security reasons, but the laptop was on, for her regular email fixes from Pete.

"Sorry, I'm so sorry," Pete said. "No one seems to know it's you, they're all just blahblah about me and a blond."

Suzy opened up the likeliest site, for Pete-type gossip and photos. "Fuck you, Pete."

The photos were grainy telephoto shots, but there they were, sitting on the porch steps of Pete's mom's house, two days earlier, with Pete's kids running around on the lawn. Suzy scrolled down, and found a closer photo of herself, kicking a ball to one of the kids, her hair blowing across her face and hiding her features. The last photo showed her face, Pete's youngest on her hip, as she and Pete walked to the car.

"Fuck, Pete," Suzy said. "How did that happen?"

"Believe me, if I'd known there was someone there, we would have had one of those painful Pete-hits-a-photographer incidents."

Suzy moved to the next site, and found herself looking at a close up of Pete's smiling face, with some gross text about Pete-finds-true-love-and-happiness. "If they only knew," she muttered.

"Are you okay?" Pete asked. "I'm stuck here today dealing with hysterical ex-wives, demanding to know why I'm letting some stranger near the kids, but I could fly out tonight."

"Oh, fuck," Suzy said. "What did you tell them?"

"That you were an old family friend, and had known my mom forever, and they could ring her to check. Mom will oblige."

"Your mom was remarkably calm, wasn't she?"

Pete laughed, and he sounded genuinely amused. "Oh yeah, but you weren't there for the bit where I explained it all to her. She got a bit freaky at first, then she rang your mom, who bitch-slapped some sense into her. Something about you being far too good for me, and she should be grateful you would put up with me, I believe."

"I am too good for you," Suzy said. "Let's be clear about that."

"Love you, I have to go do meetings and calm down ex-wives and make money and shit."

 

The phone went dead, and Suzy clicked back, to the photo of Pete smiling. She knew that he'd been looking at her, right at the moment the photo was taken.

"Go, work," she told herself. "Before the world falls apart."

***

It was shock, Suzy told herself. Just shock. She wasn't really hurt, it was just a little cut, she was just bleeding a bit. She could hear Pete, almost hysterical, somewhere outside the taxi, but she couldn't look around enough to see him. She had to listen to the cop, who was pressing something to her face, and talking to her.

"Does you neck hurt, miss?" the cop asked. "Can you move your legs?"

"Just my face," Suzy said. "And I can move my legs, but there's metal or something in the way, and I can't get them out."

More hands came in, through the broken taxi window, and someone slid a neck brace around her neck and fastened it.

"Can you make Pete stop shouting?" Suzy asked the cop.

"Your boyfriend?" the cop said. "Hang on."

He leaned out the other side of the wrecked taxi, and Suzy heard the cop call out, "Hey, Pete, your girlfriend says to shut up."

Pete stopped, and Suzy tried to smile her thanks at the cop, but she didn't manage very well.

"Fire and Rescue are here," the cop said. "They're going to cut you free."

"What happened?" Suzy asked. "I've got no idea, there was just this crash…"

"Someone ran a red light into your taxi," the cop said. "Your driver and boyfriend are fine, and we've arrested the other driver for being so drunk he forgot to get hurt."

A large fireman looked through the window. "Hi there miss. What's your name?"

"Suzy."

"Here're some ear protectors, Suzy, because we're about to make a lot of noise out here."

Suzy pulled the ear protectors on, and slipped the breathing mask over her face. She didn't bother explaining that she'd been in a band for years, and if she wasn't already deaf, her hearing was indestructible.

Five minutes later, several strong hands lifted Suzy out of the wreck, and over the debris, putting her down on the sidewalk, where a paramedic was waiting for her.

The wreck of the two cars was impressive, and if that was what Pete had been looking at, she could see why he'd been shouting.

"Pete?"

Pete pushed past the paramedic, wrapping his arms around her, and she hugged him back.

"Excuse me, miss," the paramedic said. "I really do need to check you over."

Pete pulled back a little, to look at Suzy's face. "Hang on, paramedic guy," he said, without looking away from Suzy.

Pete kissed her, just for a second, and said, "Yuck, you taste of blood."

"Fucker," Suzy said, turning back to the paramedic, and found herself looking at the lens of a professional photographer's camera.

In the paramedic's truck, while the paramedic cleaned up the cut on Suzy's face and stuck the edges together, Pete rang the PR agent he'd hired.

"…yeah, I know," Pete said into his phone. "Believe me, we didn't plan to get totaled in a car wreck either… no, I wasn't driving, we were in a fucking taxi… I couldn't see any logos, so I'm guessing a freelancer… that depends if Suzy has to go to ER. I'll call you back."

The paramedic shrugged his shoulders. "I have to always advise people to seek professional care, so it's up to you. If you pass out, have neck or head pain, or start vomiting, please go to an ER."

A cop looked in the back of the truck. "You folks ready to go? We've got a van here, right beside this one, ready to take you home."

"Let's get out of here," Suzy said. "Right now, a car crash is looking insignificant."

***

The PR agent, a surprisingly dykey woman called Melissa, stared around Suzy's apartment, at the banks of CPUs on the worktable, the mixing deck, and the rack of guitars, then at the messy kitchen.

"You live here, Pete?" Melissa asked disbelievingly. "After seeing your office, I'm struggling with this."

"While I'm in New York," Pete said. "I save the mansion thing for LA. Come in, and meet Suzy."

Melissa blinked and held out a hand for Suzy to shake. "Um, hi," said Melissa. "Knowing context and everything, I'm pretty much blown away by this."

Pete moved the acoustics off the couch and said, "Sit down, so at least Suzy will before she falls over."

Melissa perched on the couch, and Suzy slumped into the other end of it, while Pete sat on the coffee table.

"Did you find out anything?" Pete asked.

"No one is trying to sell Suzy Monroe's True Identity photos, or any variation on that," Melissa said. "The Pete Wentz Car Accident Girlfriend Photos are for sale, and for a high price, so they must be good ones. The auction listing says they're in color, and that Pete's girlfriend is injured and covered in blood."

Suzy looked down at her blood-stained T-shirt and shrugged. "It was messy," she said. "How long until they appear?"

"Hours, at a guess, unless a print magazine picks them up, then we'll have days." Melissa said. "Do you really think someone will ID you from the photos? Meeting you in person, I would never have guessed."

"Someone will," Pete said. "If they're decent color photos of Suzy, someone is going to realize who she is. We need to preempt with a press release. Right now."

Pete found the draft press release Suzy had printed out, in the mess on the coffee table, and handed it to Melissa. "This is what the four of us wrote last month, but we need professional input, because this has to be right."

Melissa took a pen out of her bag and read through the draft, making corrections and scribbling notes. She looked up and said, "And where're the photos?"

"No photos," Pete said.

Melissa shook her head. "They've got photos of Suzy covered in blood in front of a wrecked car, and playing with your kids. You need to release something better than that, to push those photos out of circulation." She looked at Suzy, and Suzy tried not to flinch. "Rock goddess photos, that's what we need, preferably with the whole band. I'll set up a studio and an in-house photographer, and find some stylists, for this evening. Get Joe and Andy here."

Suzy touched her face, where tape covered the adhesive strips over the cut. "Firstly, my face is a mess. Secondly, I don't do rock goddess. The best I can manage is clean and presentable. Thirdly, no fucking way."

Pete and Melissa were staring at her, when Suzy looked up. "You're joking," Pete said. "You're fucking joking. You are completely a rock goddess."

"And touch up will cover worse things than a cut," Melissa said.

"No," Suzy said. "I'm not doing a photo shoot. You knew that, Pete, right from the beginning."

Pete reached for his phone. "You talk Suzy around, I'll hire a chopper or something, to get Andy."

When Pete had closed the bedroom door, and Suzy could hear him talking to Joe, Melissa said, "Do it. It's the biggest possible statement the band could make, about being proud of you. This is not the time to hide, this is the time to let Joe, Andy, and especially Pete stand up for you."

Suzy shook her head.

Melissa studied Suzy for a moment, then said, "I've only met Pete once before, and I thought he was this slick rock star with a looming personal life PR crisis. Another ordinary client. But, having met you, and seen where he lives, I'm reassessing him. He's not being sleazy, and asking me to cover for him. He's not believing his own spin. He's just a guy who loves his partner, and wants to protect her."

"Not fair," Suzy said. "He's decent, so I have to go through a photo shoot."

Melissa nodded. "Want to give me your measurements, so I can get a wardrobe together for you?"

"I'd rather die," Suzy said.

"We'll go through your closet then, when Pete has found Andy. Why does he need a chopper to get Andy?"

"Andy is, um, eccentric. He lives in a shack in the middle of nowhere, in Wisconsin, with no phone. We recorded the album in his barn. He's also the kindest person I've ever met."

Melissa grimaced. "Shack in Wisconsin? Sounds primitive."

"That's the point," Suzy said.

Pete opened the bedroom door. "Joe is on his way to Wisconsin, to get Andy. They should be here by late-afternoon. Joe's pretty freaked about the car accident thing, and he says Suzy is not to get herself killed by any drunk drivers, not now, because he wants to record albums."

"Good," Melissa said. "I'll book the shoot, get clothes sorted, then I'll find you a hotel."

"Hotel?" Suzy said.

"I walked up to your apartment," Melissa said. "You need better security, at least for a while."

"And Joe and Andy will want to stay," Pete said. "You want to share this place with them?"

"I'm taking the processor and mixing deck with me," Suzy said. "I've got an album to produce."

***

Once the dinner trays were cleared onto the hotel suite floor, Melissa opened the packet of photographic proofs.

Joe put a bottle of single malt on the table, and a stack of glasses, and poured glasses.

"These are un-retouched," Melissa said. "If you choose which shots you want to use, I'll get them touched up, and released."

Suzy couldn't look at the photos; all she could focus on was everyone else's faces as they sorted through them. Eventually Pete handed Suzy a photo and said, "That one?" and she had no choice but to look.

It was the shot where Pete had been hugging her from behind, tickling her and making her laugh and squirm, while Joe and Andy had clowned around with guitar and drumsticks behind them.

"Rock goddess," Pete said. "Look at yourself."

They'd curled her hair, slapped make up on every inch of her skin, and stapled the back of her black T-shirt to draw it tighter across her breasts. It was like looking at a caricature of herself, except the others were made up too, and they still looked like themselves, so the problem must be with her perception.

"Did I really look like that at the shoot?" Suzy asked the others.

"You look like that all the time," Andy said. "You've got this amazingly hot mouth, really mobile and luscious, and your eyes are a gorgeous green sometimes. I can get pretty intense about your thighs too, but that's a personal thing."

Suzy could feel her cheeks burning, and she glared at Andy.

Pete said, "Andrew, are you moving in on Suzy?"

"I'm not hitting on Suzy," Andy said. "But if you're not managing to persuade her that she's about to inspire sexual frenzy in an entire generation of horny adolescents, then I figured I should speak up. Besides, Suzy knows she's never going to have to actually smack me."

"And this one," Melissa said, passing another photo to Suzy. "How do you work with these people?"

"I was one of them for too long," Suzy said, taking the photo. "This is all a huge feminist plan to get revenge on me for collecting porn magazines."

The photo was of just her and Pete, at Melissa's suggestion. Suzy had been pressured into wearing one of Melissa's shirts, something in a pale green, undone halfway down, showing far too much of her bra and breasts. Pete's arm was slung around her shoulders, and while she was looking at the camera, he was gazing at her face, and the look on his face was unmistakably affectionate.

"Are you serious?" Suzy asked. "You want to release this photo?"

"Maybe not today, but I think we'll need it in a day or two, once people get their heads around the idea you and Pete are together," Melissa said. "It's a gorgeous photo, of both of you."

Pete leaned across, and whispered, "C'mon, babe. I want the entire world to be jealous of me. Want to know what I was thinking about when it was taken?"

Suzy handed the photo back to Melissa. "Why the fuck not? It's not like I'm ever going to leave this hotel room again, except to be smuggled to Andy's barn."

"Sweet talking there, Pete," Joe said. "I want to compare notes with you one day. You've got some superior insight happening."

"I will punch you again, Joe," Suzy said. "Bad things will happen to you. Do you want me talking confidentially to your missus?"

"I have a loving and trusting relationship with the good lady," Joe said.

"She knows what you do at Andy's place?" Suzy asked. "Or does she think you just sit around playing the guitar all the time?"

"She might not be aware that Andy distils high-grade wheat-based spirit," Joe said. "Or that he's letting me grow a few plants. I have, however, never given her reason to doubt my fidelity, because she is one fierce woman, and owns my balls."

Melissa scooped up the proofs, with the two they'd chosen at the top. "I'll get the photo and the press release out tonight, and I'll be back tomorrow to keep you briefed. If you don't want to watch the mess, don't switch the TV on, or look at any other press."

Suzy stood up. "I'll be in my room, for the next five years."

"Finish producing the album while you're there," Pete called out, as Suzy closed the bedroom door.

***

It made sense, in an odd way, that they'd be hiding in an hotel room while a media storm about the band raged outside, Pete with headphones on, listening to the almost final cut of one of the album tracks on repeat, while Suzy blew him.

She could hear the beat of the track, the bass guitar, kettle drums and bass drum, even through the headphones, and could feel Pete's fingers flexing with the beat, against the back of her head and her neck. She shifted on her knees, grateful for the deep pile carpeting, changing angles, sliding her mouth further down his shaft, pushing her fingers harder into his ass.

Someone banged on their hotel room door, but Suzy ignored them. The door was locked, and Pete was so close to coming that if she stopped sucking long enough to tell them to go away, he might take it personally.

The track ended, and started again, and the banging on the door stopped, then Pete's hips jerked and he was coming, groaning and shaking.

Suzy knelt back on her heels when Pete lifted the headphones off. "Fuck," he said weakly. "We need to write a track, expressly for that purpose."

"Ravel's Bolero, but three minutes long, and with three guitar parts?" Suzy asked, wiping her hand on the hotel bathrobe. "What do you think?"

"Three minutes isn't long enough."

"No, about the track. You've listened to it a few times now," Suzy said.

"I can't believe you took the barn recordings and did that with them," Pete said. "That sounds like we had a full recording rig there, with a couple of sound techs."

"I had to rerecord Andy's drums," Suzy said. "And of course, he and I did the kettle drums separately. The guitars and vocals are from that weekend."

The banging on the door started again, and Joe's voice, muffled by the door, called out, "Stop having sex, Melissa is here."

"Hang on," Pete called out.

Pete pulled on jeans and a shirt, while Suzy sat cross-legged on the rumpled bed, watching him. "You need to hear this," Pete said. "You really do. I'm not asking you to look at any of the sites or anything, but you're part of the band, and this is band business, as well as personal to you."

"As soon as the TV goes on, I'm leaving the room," Suzy said. "I'll only listen to Melissa, okay?"

Suzy found a pair of her jeans, buried in the jumble of Pete's clothes, and pulled them on, then stole one of Pete's T-shirts in revenge and wandered out into the central area of the hotel suite, combing her hair, taking care not to bump the sore part of her face. She didn't want to look in a mirror to see if the bruising had spread, it felt sore enough already.

Melissa was sitting at the dining table, fat folder of printouts in front of her, and when Suzy slid into a seat, Joe put a mug of coffee down in front of her.

Melissa looked around the table. "Has anyone looked at any media outlets today? Turned on the TV?"

"Suzy asked for a complete blackout, and we've been respecting that," Andy said.

"Ah," Melissa said, looking at Suzy. "Probably a good thing. You've had pretty much saturation coverage. In terms of promoting the new album, you couldn't ask for a better profile, but some of the coverage hasn't been tasteful or kind, as we'd anticipated."

"The car wreck photos?" Suzy asked.

"Do you want to see them?" Melissa asked. "I printed them out, just in case you did."

Suzy nodded, and Melissa slid a printout across the table.

"Oh," Suzy said. The first photo was of Pete, being held back by a police officer, obviously distraught, with the wrecked cars in the background. The next one was an indistinct shot of Suzy being helped from the wreckage. Then there were the close-ups, of Pete hugging her, and of Suzy's face, shocked and blood-streaked.

Pete wrapped his arms around Suzy briefly, and Andy took the printouts from her.

"Not good," Joe said. "I hope you rang your mom and warned her."

"Twice," Suzy said. "Just to make sure she understood I wasn't actually hurt, and that I'd not be answering the phone again any time soon."

"Those photos appeared late yesterday, with a fair bit of splash, and our release hit about six hours after that," Melissa said. "I have a huge number of requests for interviews here, some of the offers with large checks attached. Most of the requests are junk, and we can bin them, but I can show you the serious ones."

"How serious?" Pete asked. "I mean, in terms of respectability, not dollars."

Suzy looked at Pete in surprise, and he shrugged at her.

"Rolling Stone," Melissa said. "Planet Out, New York Times. The big dollar offers are from the glossies, as you'd expect. Oprah's people have emailed, but with no firm offer."

"Oprah?" Joe asked. "Why? Has she ever heard our music?"

"I doubt it," Melissa said. "I'd advise against dealing with her, if you want my opinion. How many sales do you make to Mid West women over fifty?"

Suzy leaned her elbows on the table and studied her coffee. "I don't know. We could make Pete be endearing on her show, and see if we can break into that market. I did live in Albuquerque for a couple of years, and have a healthy respect for the middle-aged women there."

"You lived in Albuquerque?" Joe asked. "Why?"

"These are genuine Albuquerque breasts," Suzy said.

When she looked up from the photos again, Joe and Andy were staring at the front of her T-shirt.

"Albuquerque does good breasts then?" Joe asked.

Andy nodded his head mutely.

Melissa tapped fingernails against the tabletop. "Moving right along. A couple of the pieces of coverage have been so hostile that I'd suggest forwarding the information to your lawyers. There are anti-vilification laws for a reason. If your lawyers aren't able to deal with that kind of civil case, I can recommend specialist attorneys."

"And the rest?" Pete asked.

"A great many before-and-after photo comparisons of Suzy, as anticipated. Some prurient speculation about when Pete and Suzy got together. The occasional report has even noticed that the band has a new album on the way."

"Are we winning or losing?" Suzy asked.

"In my opinion?" Melissa asked. "We're winning. You took control of the situation, and of the information. This was not something that someone else stumbled upon, this is something you did as a group, and with some forethought."

"What would you suggest next?" Andy asked.

"Two interviews, in a couple of days. Ideally, one of them would be Suzy and Pete, but Pete by himself will have to do. And the band for the other. Two different outlets, the band interview about the album and future plans, and Pete's interview a personal one."

"Until then?" Joe asked.

"Dial out for pizza," Melissa said. "Catch up on your reading. Do whatever it is the four of you do when you're locked in a hotel suite together. You must have worked this out over the years, touring together."

Pete's hand squeezed Suzy's thigh, then slid higher.

"I'll be in touch," Melissa said. "Do you want me to take this folder with me?"

"Please," Suzy said, and Pete cut in and said, "No!"

Suzy looked at Pete for a moment, and said, "Okay, but I don't want to hear a thing about it."

When Melissa had left, Pete slid the car crash photos into the folder and pushed it aside. "Everyone awake?" he asked, and the three of them nodded. "Good, because it's time to talk plans."

Joe banged the table with his fist, grinning. "Yes! What's first? The next album, or world domination?"

"I want to release a single, from Barn Sessions," Pete says. "Right now. What have you got ready, Suzy?"

Suzy frowned at Pete. "Nothing. Get fucked."

"Of course you've got tracks ready," Pete insisted. "You've been playing them for me."

"I've had four weeks," Suzy said. "And that included a trip to Wisconsin to record additional material."

"Have you really got tracks ready?" Joe said. "Can we hear them now?"

"I'll go hide the sex toys," Pete said, "and you can play them through the speakers on the mix deck in our room." He bounded into their bedroom, and Suzy could see him rummaging through the mess on the floor.

"Which tracks are ready?" Andy asked. "Which track does Pete want for the single? Do you know?"

"The tracks aren't ready," Suzy said. "Really."

"Room's safe," Pete called out, and Suzy followed Andy and Joe in reluctantly, secretly relieved that Pete had remembered to pull up the blankets on the bed to hide the sheet.

Pete, Andy and Joe sprawled on the bed, while Suzy hooked up the speakers and selected the tracks that were closest to finished.

"I'll be in the main room," she said, and she closed the door to the bedroom behind herself.

Fifteen minutes of boredom, listening to the muted sound of the music playing in the other room. She couldn't put the TV on… The file of printouts was on the table still, so Suzy picked it up to flick through while she sat on the couch. Eventually, she'd need to find out what people had said about her anyway.

The before-and-after photos were kind of interesting, reminding Suzy that she'd never connected with her old body anyway, only ever carried it around like a burden, something to be endured. Then she found someone's poison about Pete.

The guys tumbled out of the bedroom, laughing and shouting, then they went quiet and Pete took the folder and the printouts out of her hands.

"No, babe," he said. "Don't look at them."

Suzy crawled into his lap, on the couch, and she could feel Joe beside her on the other side and Andy kneeling in front of her, hands on her knees.

"I'm not strong enough for this," she said.

Andy said, "You were strong enough to live in Albuquerque for two years, having the kind of surgery that it terrifies me to think of. Then you were strong enough to come back to us, and to come out. You were strong enough to finally get Pete to see some sense--because remember, Pete hasn't got a fucking clue--and realize the two of you belong together. And we've just listened to what you insist are rough cuts of the Barn Sessions tracks, and you were strong enough to make us all sound like fucking geniuses, instead of crazed lunatics in a grubby barn playing on a twelve volt system."

Paper crackled, and Pete said, "Does someone want to grab my laptop, from the bedroom? This shit stops now."

Joe moved, and Suzy could hear him digging through the mess in the bedroom, then he handed Pete his laptop.

"Shift a bit, Suzy," Pete said, settling the laptop on her thighs and opening it.

"What are you doing?" Andy asked.

"Updating my fucking blog," Pete said.

Suzy watched Pete's face, while he typed, rather than the screen, which was at too oblique an angle for her to read. She'd found Pete's blog, after the weekend in Wisconsin, and had been quietly pleased he'd managed to restrain himself to a cryptic post about _best weekend ever_ and _true friends_. Since then, he'd been low key, for him, managing to only hint at being in love, and at new musical projects, both of which she'd counted as successes in moderation.

"So now you all know what's been happening," Pete read. "We were hoping to keep it to ourselves for a bit longer, until the album was released, but a drunk driver and a fucking photographer ruined that. I've loved Suzy since the first crazy moment I saw her, thirteen years ago, but it takes me a while to work things out (you can ask Andy about that), and it wasn't until she walked into FOB's reunion, a month ago, that it happened for me. If I could have realized this sooner, then maybe FOB wouldn't have broken up years ago, and Suzy and I wouldn't have spent the past four years apart.

"Suzy wasn't hurt badly in the car crash, despite what the photos look like. She's here with me, and Joe and Andy are too, and we're in a hotel suite, listening to the roughs of the Barn Sessions album, and talking about what to do next."

"Pete? Are you sure?" Suzy said, but Pete just clicked the mouse buttons on the keyboard.

When he looked up from the screen, he said, "I've been thinking about things…"

Joe and Andy made noises of derision, and Pete said, "Shut up. We've got five tracks still, from the last studio album, which we never finished. We can't complete the album, and the contract has long been bought out anyway. I guess the options there are discard the songs, release them as an EP, or put them up for free download. Suzy?"

"Can't finish the album, my voice has changed too much, and I'm not happy with the idea of having put all this effort into coming out, then immediately releasing Patrick material."

Andy shrugged. "Free download then? We're not asking people to pay for the tracks, and I guess some completists might want them."

"Joe?" Pete asked.

"Can we sit on them for a while? Let's get some new stuff out there first," Joe suggested. "Then we can think about how important those tracks are to us."

"Did anyone ever do the production on the tracks?" Suzy asked. "Or are they still raw recordings?"

"Still raw," Pete said. "I've got the masters, in my vault. We'll delay dealing with those tracks for a while then. The next issue is the studio album. I can see two options here. The first is that Suzy and I do some intensive first draft writing, then the four of us lock ourselves in at Andy's place, and put together the album."

"Winter is looming," Andy said. "Four feet of snow. It gets cold, and we'll have to run the generator constantly. And live on the bus in the barn."

"Craziness," Suzy said. "But we've done worse. Is there another option, that doesn't involve thermal underwear and trying to have sex quietly for weeks at a time?"

"We do an album of the solo material Suzy has written over the past few years, what she calls her Albuquerque songs," Pete said.

Joe, Andy and Pete were all watching Suzy, waiting for her to say something. "Um, what?" was the best she could manage.

"I've heard the material," Pete said. "It's all like Yellow Girl, all classic Suzy compositions, with some really gut-wrenching lyrics. I know you didn't write the tracks for a four piece outfit, but it could be done."

"I'd have to write additional guitar parts," Suzy said. "Are you serious, Pete? This is not Fall Out Boy material."

"Maybe not old Fall Out Boy," Andy said. "But that was years ago, and we've all changed, you most obviously, so maybe we want to do something completely new."

"You'd all really do an album of my songs?" Suzy asked.

It was Joe who took Suzy's hand. "I'm not sure what's not happening in your head, Suzy, but I think we're all trying to make it clear we'd crawl through broken glass for you. Doing an album of your work will be far more pleasant than anything involving jagged edges, or four feet of snow and being away from my kids. I really don't care what the songs are like, I'm happy to play acoustic for a change, or to go reggae, or whatever--I just want to make music with you."

Suzy leaned forward, making Pete squawk and grab his laptop, and hugged Joe.

***

"What do you think?" Pete asked, crawling in between Suzy and the newspaper.

Suzy nudged her glasses up her nose with difficulty and shook the paper out. "That I can't read with you in the way? That I've not had any coffee yet?"

She lifted her elbow to let Pete out again, and waited until he'd wrapped a towel around his waist and disappeared out into the hotel suite, before turning back to the paper.

She wasn't sure why Pete had decided that telling all to the New York Times had been the right choice, but there it was, in the Magazine section, a page of Pete rambling and the photo of the two of them.

_Your personal life has been a matter of public entertainment for years. What's it like, the one time you try to keep it quiet, to have to come out or be outed?_

_I don't give a damn about the privacy of my personal life, not after all this time. I've not hidden much ever, I'm just too loud and indiscreet. Suzy, though, is intensely private, and always has been. We talked about going away somewhere together, running away, just so she didn't have to go through this public exposure._

_Eloping?_

_Technically, I'm still married to someone else, so that's not an option at the moment. I'd marry her, for sure, if she'd have me. I've proposed to her often enough, usually in some hugely inappropriate way. I think the most recent time was during a show, in Arizona a few years ago, in front of ten thousand people. No, make that in the New York Times. Marry me, babe?_

_I see what you mean about loud and indiscreet. Tell us about what happened at the FOB reunion._

_Andy decided to get the four of us together, for a weekend on his property in Wisconsin. He tracked down Suzy and persuaded her to join us, for the first time since the band had split four years before. Suzy and I had been in touch during that time, but I'd not seen her in person since before she'd transitioned. It was like all the layers of unhappiness had been peeled from her, and she shone from within. It took about three hours, sitting around the fire and playing acoustic, listening to her sing, for me to fall completely in love with the person who'd been my best friend for nine years. Or possibly I worked out I'd been in love with her the whole time._

_How'd she feel about that?_

_The words 'arrogant' and 'superficial' and 'asshole' were used. Not a strong start there. She was right, of course, but I didn't realize how right until the next day, when I heard her sing the chorus to Yellow Girl a capella. There's nothing like discovering one of the best and most heart-breaking ballads of the past few years was written about you to smack a guy down. Once we got past that, everything was wonderful._

_Yellow Girl is about you?_

_It's about Suzy being amazingly strong and resilient. And me being a jerk. I fail at relationships in general, and I can't quite believe she puts up with me._

Pete pushed the bedroom door open, two coffee mugs in his hands.

"I can't believe I put up with you either, and I'm not doing the wedding thing with you," Suzy said. "I don't care how inappropriately you propose."

"Damn," Pete said. "I'll take the jewelry back then."

"You bought a ring?" Suzy asked. "You're fucking with me?"

"Of course I bought a ring," Pete said. "Do you want to see it, just so you know what you're missing out on?"

"Let me finish the article first," Suzy said. "You arrogant, superficial asshole."

_You've mentioned Suzy transitioning. What's it like to have someone close to you change gender?_

_Some of it is incredibly easy. It's like Suzy was always Suzy inside, and that's who I knew and loved, and now her outside matches that too. And her outside is incredibly hot, which is a source of great personal happiness. Then there were the unexplained sadnesses, the small things that showed the old Suzy was struggling with life, and they're all gone now. Some of it can be tricky. The three of us guys in the band sometimes forget Suzy is a woman now, and, yeah, then she complains. And then sometimes we really, really remember she's a woman, like the time she punched Joe for staring at her cleavage too long. I get unlimited cleavage staring rights, so I'm fine._

_Were you and Suzy lovers before she transitioned?_

_No. _

_Why not?_

_I'm not very good at being queer, and I know because I've tried it a few times. And Suzy never asked._

_Would you have, if she'd asked?_

_Huh? Of course._

_Despite not being queer?_

_I would have closed my eyes and imagined a woman exactly like she is now._

"How am I going so far?" Pete asked.

"I've not broken up with you yet," Suzy said, taking the mug of coffee Pete held out to her.

_And the future?_

_Suzy is producing the Barn Sessions album at the moment, and we've got plans to shoot a video for the single from the album in the near future. Then we'll be relocating to Chicago for the winter, to put together a studio album. Then another studio album, next year. Just wait until you hear Suzy's voice. _

"Video!" Suzy shouted. "What fucking video?!"

"For the single," Pete said. "I was thinking, concept-wise, that to match the album, we should film it on Andy's property, kind of fake-low budget, with lots of shots of the four of us goofing around."

The bedroom door opened, and Andy appeared in the doorway wearing a hotel robe and holding a copy of the paper. "What fucking video? And are you two really getting married?"

"Knock on the door," Suzy said, pulling the bedding up to her armpits. "No wedding. And we're not filming a video."

"On your property," Pete said. "In the barn. With lots of shots of you with no shirt on playing kettle drums."

"Doesn't Joe want to burst into our bedroom too?" Suzy asked.

"He's on the phone to his missus, explaining about the whole cleavage punching thing," Andy said. "Nice one, Pete."

"Shit."

"So where's the ring?" Suzy said. "I want to see what I'm turning down."

Pete leaned over the edge of the bed and rustled through his briefcase, then handed Suzy a jeweler's box.

Suzy opened it up and nodded approvingly. "Nice," she said. "Large enough to say 'shitload of cash' but not so glitzy as to say 'fake'. A single diamond, with a certificate proving it's not from a country that uses child slave labor."

Andy nodded. "Good touch."

"But?" Pete asked.

"Spoil me with collectible guitars, babe," Suzy said. "There are some parts of female social conditioning I've not absorbed."

"If I'd proposed with an immaculate 1963 Gibson Les Paul, you might have said yes?" Pete asked, looking stunned.

"Not a chance," Suzy said, handing back the jeweler's box. "But I would have kept the guitar."

"I'm going," Andy said, closing the door again.

Pete put the jeweler's box back in his briefcase. "Damn. Does this mean you'll never marry me?"

Suzy tossed the newspaper on the floor and rolled over, closer to Pete. "I think we might be talking about two different things here. I'd love to be married to you--"

Pete pushed her back on the bed, mouth jammed over hers, until Suzy smacked his towel-clad ass hard enough to make him stop, though he didn't let her sit up.

"As I was saying, no problems with being married to you. It's the wedding thing I can't face, because I've already been to one of your weddings, and that was enough forever."

"So what do you want?" Pete asked. "Because, for a while there it was sounding like you were rejecting me."

"Oh, I think you should be rejected frequently, just for your own good. I will marry you, once you're divorced, but it has to be a completely private wedding. You and me, and two witnesses, and you get to tell your mom only."

"What?"

"No diamonds, no rings, no tuxedos, no cake, no photos. I want matching tattoos. No fuss, no mess, no money, apart from a pre-nup. Just you and me."

Pete started to smile slowly. "Do we get a honeymoon?"

"Sure, as long as it doesn't involve a fucking hotel in New York."

"And I can keep proposing to you inappropriately?" Pete asked.

"Works for me. Just remember the collectible guitars."

***


	3. Don't Shake the Walls Tonight

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [leaving albuquerque](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/leaving+albuquerque)  
  
  
 

**Leaving Albuquerque**  
Part Three: Don't Shake the Walls Tonight  
[](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

Lyrics of Don't Shake the Walls Tonight belong to me.

 

The director and camera crew clambered out of the truck, in the clearing on Andy's property, and the director said, "You're shitting me. You recorded an album here?"

"You did bring a generator, didn't you?" Andy said, looking at the equipment on the back of the truck. "I've only got a twelve volt system here."

"No, really, you live here?" the director asked. "This isn't some weird-assed location someone found for you?"

Andy pulled his shoulders back indignantly. "This is my home."

The all-terrain vehicle carrying the stylists and the rest of the crew rattled into the clearing, and Suzy sighed. "Damn. Why did I want to be a woman? Now someone's going to want to curl my hair or something."

Pete kissed her cheek. "Curl yours, straighten mine. It's all good."

The director walked into the barn, where they'd already set up their instruments. "This is unbelievably good," the director said. "Actual kettle drums! And is that a still in the corner? And sacks of wheat?"

"It's a barn," Andy said patiently. "Doesn't everyone have this stuff in their barns?"

Suzy found herself sitting in the front lounge of the bus, make up plastered on her face, her hair back-combed and teased, while a wardrobe tech held up clothes. "Jeans," Suzy said. "Unless you're showing me jeans, I'm not cooperating."

The tech put down the miniskirt and sighed. "Are you sure?"

"We're on a farm!" Suzy said. "Well, it would be a farm if Andy did any work on it. There are snakes and things here, and I'm not running around the orchard in anything less than denim and boots."

The tech held up a sequined bra hopefully, and Suzy glared at her.

"Think butch dyke," Suzy said. "As a starting point. A very shy butch dyke, whose friends have forced her into being in a video."

Pete pushed his way into the lounge, dug through his duffel bag for a moment, then waved a lip gloss and an eyelash curler in the air triumphantly.

He paused to blow a kiss to Suzy, and look critically at the sequined bra. "No, the cut's wrong," he said decisively. "You'll get armpit bulging. Wear your black lace bra instead."

When he'd gone, Suzy sighed, and said, "Okay, a butch dyke whose boyfriend can be so very femme at times."

The wardrobe tech looked speculatively at Suzy's chest. "What cup size did you say you are? He could be right about the armpit bulging. What about a leather bustier?"

"Andy will disown me if I wear leather on his property," Suzy said. "Have you got anything in tasteful plastic?"

When Suzy stepped off the bus half an hour later, wearing her own black jeans and boots, the black lace bra--because Pete had been right--and a black denim lace-up bustier, she hadn't expected the film crew to stop and stare too. The threshold for impressing Pete was pretty damned low, and Andy and Joe weren't exactly connoisseurs, but the lighting guy looked like he was about to drop the floodlight he was holding, and even the camera tech stood up to look over the top of his camera.

The director rushed up to her, beaming. "You look great," he said. "Let's do a lighting check in the barn."

They did three clean run-throughs of Sugar, with a pause in between each to damp down the dust on the floor of the barn, then the director pulled the two inside cameras in for the kettle drum shots.

On the fourth take of the opening sequence, with Suzy and Andy beating the kettle drums, Suzy bitterly regretted ever going near the bloody drums. It was hard work, pounding the damned skins with the mallets under arc lights, and she couldn't pull the strikes or get the timing wrong, or the symmetry with Andy wouldn't work. Andy, fitter, leaner and a whole lot more naked, grinned at Suzy between takes, while she guzzled electrolyte replacement fluid and had her make up fixed.

When she handed her bottle back to the crew member responsible for her not passing out, Pete held his hand up and walked in front of the cameras, across to Suzy.

"Hey babe," he said, hugging her from behind, mouth against her ear through her hair. "Will you let me do something?"

"What?' Suzy asked, then Pete nuzzled his mouth against her shoulder, sliding his hands across her sweat-wet belly, in the gap between her bustier and jeans.

"C'mon," Pete said, kissing her neck. "Give me a little something here, love."

Suzy closed her eyes, shutting out the arc lights and crew, and let her head drop back against his shoulder. "Pete…"

"That's better," he said, his hands moving up her bustier, drifting through the air above the fabric, before his fingers pulled the knot at the top of the bustier undone. "So much better."

"I'm going to kill you," Suzy said. "Really."

"No you're not, you're going to let me do this," Pete whispered, his fingers pulling the lacing loose, so the bustier fell open, then sliding up her skin to find the shoulder straps and push them down her arms. "Then you're going to play the drums with Andy, and I'm going to jerk off to the video footage for the rest of my life."

One of his hands found her chin, turning her face so he could kiss her, then he was gone and she was blinking in the lights while the make up tech fixed the mess Pete had made of her face.

Andy nodded approvingly, and Suzy shrugged. Looked like she was shooting the kettle drum sequence wearing only a bra and jeans.

On the count, she and Andy threw themselves into the opening sequence of Sugar, and for a moment the magic of the day of the reunion was back, the harmonics of the drums hanging together, making the barn resonate, and Suzy found she was laughing breathlessly, Andy's sweaty arm around her back, when the take was done.

The rest of the shoot was easy, comparatively, consisting of the four of them running around the orchard, standing on top of the bus, or crowding into Andy's kitchen, along with the crew, cameras and lights. If Suzy didn't think too hard about Pete persuading her to drum while barely dressed, it was a quick and painless video shoot.

 

***

The bathroom in the Chicago warehouse apartment, where they'd moved for the winter, was entirely mirrored, so wherever Suzy looked, she saw endless images of herself, pale pink skin, flushing darker on her face and throat, tangled hair falling across her face. Pete's hands were startlingly brown, one on her breast, the other under a thigh, and if she looked down, she could see down the line of his spine, the muscles moving under his skin.

Then there was the feel of what he was doing, his tongue on her labia, teasing her urethra, making her want something inside so desperately.

"Can't wait," she'd said, minutes ago, when the ache had started, but he'd grinned up at her and kept going.

"Really can't wait," she said, letting go of the edge of the counter to grab a handful of his hair. "You listening?"

She wobbled, balanced precariously, and Pete's hands tightened, holding her steady, and he looked up at her.

"'Kay," he said, standing up, pushing her and the towel she was sitting on further back on the counter. The pump pack of lube on the counter was within reach, and he grabbed a handful, smearing it on his cock.

This was new, the feeling of his skin touching her, nothing between them, completely raw, and they both held their breath until the slide had stopped.

"Fuck," Pete whispered. "You feel…"

The incandescent heater in the bathroom was making Pete's skin slippery with sweat, glistening in the mirrors, the muscles in his ass flexing as he pushed into her. He shifted, changing angles, and Suzy stopped being able to keep her eyes open to watch them in the mirror as the ache inside her turned to primal heat, and Pete pushed her hard, straight into coming.

Their bodies slapped together, slippery and slick, and Pete cried out and ground in hard as he came, buried deep inside her.

He hung onto her for a while, both of them panting, then he said, "Fuck, I just came inside you."

"That was the plan, wasn't it?"

Pete chuckled. "Yeah, I know, but it's still worth mentioning."

He pulled out slowly, and they both looked down. "At least you know I'll never get pregnant," Suzy said. "No matter how many times we do that."

Pete helped her down from the counter. "Are you sure? We could keep trying…"

Suzy pushed him towards the shower. "Did you hear the security system chime, while we were fucking?"

"I hope not."

When Suzy had showered and dressed, she found Andy sitting on the stairs to the warehouse space, under the accommodation section of the apartment, his headphones jammed resolutely on, and Suzy poked him with her toe.

"Hi there," she said, when he took his headphones off and stood up. "You're early."

"I drove up this morning, to beat the weather," Andy said. "Didn't think you'd mind, since I had the keys and security codes. Don't you people ever close doors?"

Suzy shrugged. "Um, oops? Guess we're going to have to, if you're here for the winter."

"Please," Andy said. "Please, close the doors. I'll go finish unloading my car, now I can do it without accidentally seeing two of my friends fucking."

Suzy bent down, to look through the balustrade. Andy's drum kit was already set up, in the warehouse space.

"Pete!" she yelled, back up into the apartment. "Andy's here, we need to move his speaker stacks!"

When the stacks were inside, Andy carried boxes of food into the kitchen. "Soy milk," he said. "Tofu pups, my preferred brand of seitan, and organic mustard, which is a bastard to find. Several cereals, bread mixes, textured vegetable protein, and bulk carob and dandelion tea. I'll even cook for you both, as long as no one whines."

Suzy filled the water jug for the coffee percolator and set it to run. "Go for it," she said. "Cook anything you want."

Andy opened the fridge door, revealing a completely empty refrigerator. "Nothing?"

"You were turning up, and you bring food," Pete said.

Andy shoved food into the fridge, then closed the door. "There's a tube of lube on top of the fridge," he said disapprovingly, handing the tube to Pete. "That's not hygienic."

Pete took the tube. "Guess not. You might want to wash your hands before you touch any more food."

Andy washed his hands hurriedly.

Suzy leaned against the kitchen counter. "There's lube in the living room," she said. "And bathroom. Can you think of anywhere else, apart from the cars?"

"I'll have a look around," Pete said, wandering off.

Andy opened a kitchen cupboard at random and began to move boxes of cereal into it. "I realize it's all still new to you both, but it's something of a trial to the rest of us."

"I went four years with nothing except the occasional apologetic fumble, so I think I'm allowed to make up for lost time. Have you ever tried making out with an earnest lesbian? It's all talking about boundaries and attachment issues, and then you get a peck on the cheek. I just wanted to test drive my breasts, not discuss my previous relationships."

"Can't say I've dated many earnest lesbians," Andy said. "Any, actually. Um, why did you?"

"I like girls," Suzy said. "I would have thought that was obvious. And frankly, the idea of trying to negotiate dating men terrified me. So I took to hanging around this dyke café near where I lived, eating dreadful muffins and drinking burned coffee, and trying to work out how to get some action with young women with shaved heads and more tattoos than you."

"What else did you do during that time, apart from chase dykes and write ballads?" Andy asked, sitting on the edge of the table.

"Went to college for a bit, took up running, did the requisite hours of therapy to qualify for surgery, took a bucketful of hormones, went a bit crazy, got a lot sane. Missed all of you more than I could bear."

"Hard times?" Andy asked.

Suzy nodded.

Joe arrived while Andy was in the shower, carrying cases of beer up the stairs, stacking them beside the fridge and filling one shelf.

"Essential supplies," he said, handing a beer to Suzy. "I'll be back with guitars and bourbon."

Suzy popped the top off her beer. "The whole rock-and-roll lifestyle thing would be more convincing if he didn't smell of bubblegum and have glitter in his eyebrows, wouldn't it?"

"And My Little Pony shoelaces," Pete said, wandering back in. "Which are kind of neat."

"What's the plan?" Joe asked, putting two bottles of bourbon on the table a moment later, then lifted the lid off the pan on the stove and peered at the ingredients. "And is Andy cooking?"

"Food, which Andy is cooking at the same time as he's using hot water that lasts for longer than ninety seconds and isn't dependent on the sun," Pete said. "With coffee and beer. Then Suzy works her way through her Albuquerque back catalog, for as long her voice holds out, or until we all want to slash our wrists."

Joe nodded approvingly. "It's about time we did something bleak. Apart, you know, from going on and on about Pete trying to kill himself."

Suzy rabbit-punched Pete in his bicep, making him squeal. "The idea is to start the album bleak, and move the central narrative towards optimism, ending on a positively cheerful note."

Pete rabbit-punched her back. "As your label manager, I'd like to tell you that the album is a career killer, and that you should all go back to making pop music. But, since the lead singer already committed career suicide by having a fucking sex change, you've got nothing to lose."

Suzy plugged her acoustic into the small amp and speaker set in the living room, along with a voice mike. If she was going to be singing for hours, she wanted some amplification.

She started at the beginning, laptop in front of her recording, notebook open beside her, Andy, Joe and Pete sprawled and slouched across the couches, bottles of beer and water on the coffee table. Pete's face was neutral, but she already knew which of the songs he liked. Joe picked at the label on his beer bottle, eyes half-closed, and she knew he was listening closely, letting his imagination play with the arrangements, finding the potential in the songs. Andy watched her, concentration on his face, and she guessed he was listening to the lyrics, trying to find her story in them.

Suzy sang the final chorus of the third song, which Pete wanted on the album, "Some distances can't be measured in miles, some changes can't be undone. The city's hollow, and I'm a pebble. (Don't shake the walls tonight.)"

She put her acoustic down and took the beer Pete held out to her, and looked at the others. Joe was looking at her with something like awe, and Andy was suspiciously damp-eyed.

"Suzy," Joe said, and he cleared his throat. "Um, yeah. We've got to record that one."

"Told you the songs were good," Pete said.

"It's not just that's it's good," Andy said, and yeah, his voice was rough. "It's that it's Suzy, who has just told me how lonely she was, and now Pete's all smug and happy, but where the fuck was he when she was going through this?"

Andy stood up, and Pete pushed himself up out of the couch too, to face him.

"Oh, shit," Joe said.

"Do you think I don't feel bad about that?" Pete asked.

"Do you?" Andy said. "Why didn't you go and find her? She was your best fucking friend, and for all you knew, she could have killed herself."

"Hey," Suzy said. "Still in the room here."

"I failed," Pete shouted. "I know I failed her. It fucking kills me to think about it."

"And then you email Joe and I to say Patrick's been in touch with you, and he's fine, he's just sorting through some personal issues. Only now we find out that you knew Suzy was fucking transitioning by herself in Albuquerque! Do you think of that now, when Suzy smiles at you like you're the center of the fucking universe?"

Suzy glanced at Joe, who was watching Andy and Pete with horror on his face, then reached across for the microphone she'd been singing into.

"Sit down and shut the fuck up, both of you," Suzy said, into the mike.

Andy rubbed at his hair, tangling it further, then sat back down again, but Pete stayed where he was.

"Pete," Suzy said, voice amplified. "Sit down, or leave the room."

Pete sat down, on the edge of the couch, and Suzy pushed the mike away from herself.

"Well, that was unpleasant but necessary," she said. "If this was only a group of friends, I'd tell Andy to fuck off, that what Pete and I did was our own business. Thing is, this is more than that, and if we're about to spend a few intense weeks working on this album, we're going to be right up against my feelings, and it's all going to be raw."

Joe disappeared into the kitchen, and came back a moment later with a bottle of bourbon and glasses.

When Suzy had a glass in her hand, she said, "I guess I should try and clarify things. I didn't want Pete around, for a start. Could you imagine trying to reinvent yourself with Pete in the room? How could I work out how to be a woman, my own kind of woman, with him driving a truck through gender roles just to see what kind of mess he could make? He'd already put me through enough misery inadvertently with the whole cross-dressing thing."

Pete looked up, at Suzy, and said, "Oh, fuck."

"Yeah," Suzy said. "I'll tell Ryan and Spencer it's okay to talk to you about the time they took me shopping for girl clothes, when we were on the Fusion tour. They really tried to help, but the whole experience sent me spiraling down badly."

"So, if Pete had showed up, you would have sent him away?" Andy asked.

Suzy shrugged. "Pre-op, yeah, I would have. Post-op, maybe not, not once I'd moved to New York and started to build a life and career again. I'm not angry at him for not trying to find me, given I walked out on a partially completed album, which was a huge breach of trust with the band. I'm more unhappy that he managed not to notice my songwriting. We were supposed to have some kind of magical synergy there."

"Do you know if Decaydance ever turned down an artist who brought one of your songs to us?" Pete asked. "Just out of curiosity."

Suzy smiled, because Pete was right. "Not that I know of. In fact, my manager said that word among the artists was that I was a good luck charm, and that so many people wanted my songs to take to you that there was something suspicious going on. I never explained to my manager what the connection was, though the email I got from him when this all went public was pretty damned amusing."

"And I'd sit in a sound box in LA, listening to some kid's demo cut, nodding my head, because FOB could have recorded the track I was listening to, in some alternate universe where Patrick hadn't walked out," Pete said.

"Are we done?" Suzy asked. "Andy? Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

Andy shook his head, so Suzy reached for her acoustic and pulled the mike across, back in front of her.

The sun had set long before, and they'd broken for leftover lunch, pizza and coffee, before Suzy flicked the final page in her notebook. She was nearly out of voice, sounding more like her old self than usual, and the room was littered with pizza boxes, plates and coffee mugs.

"The collective noun for me  
Has been left behind.  
The accounts are closed, returned the key  
No forwarding address.  
One name, one face, one person to be.  
I'm going home,   
Leaving Albuquerque,  
Finding a place I've never been."

The final verse still hung in the room, when Suzy leaned across, switched off the amp and propped her acoustic against the wall. She stretched her hands and rolled her shoulders, and waited.

"We need to do this album," Joe said. "Not for commercial reasons, but just for us."

Andy nodded. "That last song…" He shook his head. "I need some downtime. Can we have a ten minute break?"

Andy went to his room, Joe down to the warehouse, and Pete finally met Suzy's gaze. "I didn't know Andy thought that badly of me," he said.

"I wouldn't ever ask Joe what he thinks of your parenting either," Suzy said. "But neither of them have refused to be friends with you, which says good things about both their generosity and your ability to persuade people to love you."

"What Yellow Girl rights did you sell?" Pete asked. "Because that belongs on this album too."

"I never sell exclusive rights," Suzy said. "So we can use it. Isn't this a conflict of interest for you, since you release Charyis too?"

"Of course," Pete said. "Doesn't mean we can't do it though."

Andy came back in and stood in front of Suzy, holding his hand out. Suzy took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet, and hugged her tightly.

She hugged him back.

***

Pete was awake and up, when Suzy stumbled out of bed the next day. He was talking on the phone in the kitchen, his laptop in front of him, and he waved at her while she poured herself coffee.

Noises from downstairs, banging and clattering, indicated Joe and Andy were working already, setting up the studio space ready for rehearsing. When Pete put the phone down, Suzy said, "You should have woken me."

"After yesterday, I figured you were exhausted. Claudia has just sent me the upload link for the video for Sugar, which arrived sometime during the night. Want to get the others, and I'll download it and dump it to disk?"

"Coffee," Suzy said. "Clothes. Toothbrush. Let's keep things simple."

"Go, go, go," Pete said, and Suzy shuffled off, back to the bedroom. She could wear grubby clothes, it wouldn't matter if they were going to spend the day working on arrangements in a freezing warehouse. Though, however cold the studio was, it was going to be warmer than Andy's barn would have been.

She could hear Sugar playing while she brushed her teeth, and the finished product sounded good, even after she'd worked on it for more hours than she could bear to think of. The kettle drums were inspired, and her voice came through fine.

Joe, Andy and Pete were sitting in silence, the TV screen blank, when Suzy walked into the living room, dressed and sipping toothpaste-flavored coffee. "How is it?" she asked.

"Um, Suzy," Pete said. "There's, um, footage in there you're not going to be happy with."

Suzy sat on the arm of the couch, beside Pete. "How unhappy?"

"Could you go sit next to someone else?" Pete asked.

"Fuck," Suzy said. "Andy?"

Andy coughed. "Well…"

"Joe?"

"Oh, shit," Joe said. "I can see why they used it, but Pete's right, you're going to be so upset."

Suzy put down her coffee. "Look? Nothing in my hands. Please tell me you left us some kind of loophole for approving the video clip before release, then show me the fucking clip."

"Thing is," Pete said. "Thing is, I don't want to change the clip. Please don't hurt me."

Suzy took the remote control out of Pete's hand and hit play.

The first image on the screen, for the opening seconds of drumming, was Pete's hands on her belly, sliding through sweat, then the image flashed to Andy drumming, and then back to Pete's hand moving up her bustier.

"No fucking way," Suzy said.

Three seconds of Andy and her pounding the kettle drums, and then the screen showed Pete's hands pulling the knot undone on the bustier. A couple of seconds of Joe and Pete leaping around with their guitars, then the lacing was undone, and the bustier was being pulled off her, showing black lace and pale skin damp with perspiration.

More kettle drums, with her and Andy sweating and grinning, then Pete was turning her chin to kiss her, immediately before the camera cut to her standing at the microphone, singing the opening line.

Suzy froze the image and turned to Pete. "Did you know at the time this was being filmed?"

Pete shook his head vigorously. "I held up my hand and walked in front of the cameras, so I thought they'd stopped. That's just about the hottest thing I've ever seen in a video. If we leave it in, this is going to go crazy."

"I didn't know it was being filmed," Suzy said. "If I'd known, I would never have let you touch me like that."

"I barely touch you," Pete said. "Just your belly, and I'm not planning on announcing to the world what that does to you--"

Joe made a choking noise, and Suzy turned to glare at him for a moment then glanced at Andy, who shook his head mutely and waggled his hands helplessly.

"And then your shoulders," Pete continued. "Then we kiss. It's not the touching that makes it so fucking hot. It's you."

Suzy started the video from the beginning again, hitting the pause button every second.

"Fuck," she said. "You don't touch me, do you? It looks like you're groping my tits, until you freeze the image, and then it's clear you're not. How come I keep giving way on these things?" Suzy asked. "No photos, no video, no reunion album at all, I'm sure I said no to all these things too."

"Because you actually want to do them?" Andy suggested. "At least I'm sure you wanted to do The Barn Sessions. It was you who set up the laptop to record the sessions."

"I record everything I play," Suzy said. "I'll be recording all of the work we do for the next few weeks. One thing being a producer taught me is that the only perfect performance you'll have is the one where you don't record. Record it all, dump the rubbish later."

"And there are things you still won't do," Joe said. "Like interviews. How hard did that guy from Rolling Stone beg, when he found out you were in the hotel suite as well, but just wouldn't talk to him?"

"Some things are good business," Pete said. "Like this video. Seriously, with a clip of you smoldering like that, we could do anything we wanted. It'll be played alongside the clip of Sophie B. Hawkins writhing around on the floor in ripped clothes singing Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover forever."

"Wow, doorway to your subconscious, Pete," Andy said.

"What? Sophie B Hawkins was fucking hot in that clip," Pete said.

"I feel cheated somehow," Suzy said. "Fuck, I should have known they'd keep filming if you were groping me. I'd better see the whole damned thing, hadn't I?"

Ten minutes later, having watched the clip through three times, Suzy shrugged. "How did I wind up getting branded this way?" she asked Pete.

"Um, because your old branding didn't work anymore?" Pete suggested.

"Because we always secretly wanted a hot babe lead singer?" Joe said. "And we never knew how to tell you?"

Suzy looked at Andy. "Sorry," Andy said. "My brain is still looping the video. This could take some time."

"The track is fucking good," Suzy said. "Whatever the clip looks like."

"There's a song with the video?" Andy asked.

***

The sound studio walls were closing in, and Suzy had to think hard to work out whether the time on the clock was AM or PM. It had to be evening, they couldn't possibly have been there all the way around the clock.

The tech behind the glass held up his hand, and his voice came over the speakers. "That was a clean record. Want to take a few minutes, people? There's someone here to see you."

Suzy slid off her headphones and put her guitar in its rest, then stood up cracking her neck, while the others stretched and found drinks of water.

"Do we need to eat?" Joe asked, opening the studio door.

"It might help," Andy said. "Or it might not. How many days is this?"

"I don't know," Pete said. "I can't count that far, not without taking my shoes off."

Mike, their manager, was in the foyer of the sound studios, beaming at them. "You sound great," he said. "Just amazing. Suzy's voice is just heart-breaking."

Suzy flopped into the ancient couch, too weary to do anything with the praise.

Pete sat beside Suzy, and they both slid towards the middle of the couch, where the springs had died. "Hi, Mike. You don't do house calls. Studio calls."

"I do for you people, especially when Kelly from the Grammys has been in touch. She rang this evening, to see if Fall Out Boy would be interested in playing the Grammys this year live."

Suzy didn't open her eyes, but she felt Pete tense up beside her. "Fuck, yeah. We'll play the Grammys. Does it time in with the release of Albuquerque?" Pete said.

"Can you bring Albuquerque forward?" Mike asked. "Even just a single and a vid from it would do."

"Which track?" Suzy asked, dragging her eyes open and turning her head to look at Pete. "Don't Shake the Walls Tonight? Or Leaving Albuquerque?"

"Walls," Pete said decisively. "We could get the single out in time, sure."

Suzy closed her eyes again. "Anything, as long as I don't have to produce it and we get to go home now."

"Don't you want to hear what you're nominated for?" Mike asked.

"No," Suzy said, at the same time as the others shouted, "Yes!"

"Pretty much what you'd expect. Best Short Music Video, Best Rock Performance by a Group, Best Rock Album, Record of the Year, for Sugar, Album of the Year, for The Barn Sessions, and Suzy will be pleased to hear Yellow Girl is up for Song of the Year."

Suzy opened her eyes again. "Fuck." Song of the Year was for the songwriter.

Pete squeezed her hand.

***

Suzy never thought she'd go back to Albuquerque, but there she was, sitting on a hotel room bed in the city, case in the corner, guitar beside her.

She flopped back on the bed. Somewhere down the hall, the crew for the video shoot was staying. They'd invited her to their rooms for drinks, if she felt like it, but that would involve talking to strangers, to people who maybe thought they knew something about her.

The concept for the video for Don't Shake the Walls Tonight was good. Suzy was in Albuquerque to shoot the vocals, in a shabby, low-rent apartment the director had found, and around the city. Pete, Joe and Andy would shoot the instrumentals the following week in Chicago, in one of the clubs that Fall Out Boy had started out at, with an empty space on the stage, where she should have been.

A great idea, and the director had insisted she come to Albuquerque alone, that with Pete there she wouldn't be vulnerable enough, that it would show in the video.

Someone knocked on the door, and when Suzy checked the peephole, the wardrobe tech for the shoot, a bubbly young woman called Poppy, was waving at the door.

"Hi," Poppy said, when Suzy opened the door. "We're ordering pizza. Did you want to join us?"

Suzy looked back at the empty room, and her guitar. "Sure," she said. "Just let me grab my phone and wallet."

Poppy's hotel room was crowded with crew, and a middle-aged guy with a ponytail made room for Suzy on the carpet and handed her a beer.

"Hi there," he said. "I'm Leo, camera."

"Suzy, music," Suzy said, and Leo chuckled.

"I know who you are, I've got teenagers."

The person beside Leo grabbed his arm, dragging his attention away. Suzy looked up as the hotel room door open, and people shouted "Pizza!"

The kid carrying the pizza was short and chubby, with strawberry blonde hair and a big grin, calling out, "Get out of my way, you losers!" in a Texan accent to the room as he stepped over people to put the stack of pizza cartons on the bed.

Suzy's stomach flipped, and she took a long drink of her beer and stayed where she was, letting the general dive for pizza hide her confusion. The pizza kid could only be the actor they'd found to play Patrick in the video.

He didn't quite have her old face--his chin was a little too round and forehead was too narrow--but the resemblance was unsettling.

"Pizza?" someone asked her, and she made herself get to her feet and go and find the vegetarian pizza.

The kid sat beside her, a couple of beers later, holding out a slightly greasy hand. "Hey," he said. "I'm Mick."

"Suzy," she said, shaking his hand. "Can I just say how weird this is?"

"You want to try it from my side?" Mick asked.

"Okay, I can see that might be a little freaky," she admitted. "I didn't ruin your career as an impersonator by changing gender, did I?"

Mick laughed. "Actually, no. I'm a fair bit younger than you, so I missed out on that option. I just want to say how cool I think this all is. When I found out what the script for the video was, I was really blown away by the concept of it. I can't wait to hear the track."

"Um, thanks," Suzy said.

The next day, at Albuquerque airport, Suzy sat on an information desk, wearing a freaking dress and freaking high heels, her battered acoustic in her arms, surrounded by a full camera crew and lights.

The director nodded, and Suzy started singing Don't Shake the Walls Tonight, because she'd never learned to mime convincingly, and behind her fake-Patrick walked through the arrival gate wearing a trucker hat, and carrying a pack and a guitar case, acting every bit as terrified as Suzy had felt when she'd made the same journey for real, nearly five years earlier.

It was the only scene she'd share with past-Patrick, in the rest of the video post-production would add his image, like a ghost, following her around the city.

***

The dressing room was thoughtfully equipped with a TV, so when the make up tech had finished fussing with her face, Suzy turned the volume up and dragged her chair over to watch the red carpet coverage from the front of the building.

Minders were herding the arrivals past the fans, towards the red carpet press craziness that Suzy hated. Lisa Rinna and someone Suzy didn't recognize were cornering the arrivals, and she watched as Lisa and Anonymous pestered a long-suffering Brit-pop singer who was falling out of her gown. Rappers, RandBers, familiar faces and newcomers--only the jazz musos got left alone.

Suzy had refused to do the red carpet, despite everything that Mike and Pete had tried. She wasn't putting on some stupid dress and letting loser journalists ambush her on live camera, no matter what leverage Mike and Pete used.

The outfit she was wearing at that moment was bad enough. Her usual jeans-and-cleavage approach hadn't worked, not for the Grammys, but she'd at least managed to be allowed to put opaque tights on under the miniskirt.

The camera angle changed, and showed Joe, Pete and Andy bounding down the red carpet in matching tuxedos, swinging off each other, hugging people they knew, and being idiots.

Pete pushed past the security guards, up to the barrier, to hug people at random, until the security guards removed him, and Suzy had to grin. Pete had been wildly hyper, when she'd seen him a couple of hours before, and it didn't look like he'd calmed down.

"Fucker," she said to herself. She kind of hoped they didn't win anything they were nominated for, because a hyper Pete should never be allowed near a microphone.

"And here's Fall Out Boy," Lisa Rinna said, on the TV. "At least, part of Fall Out Boy. Hi, guys. Where's Suzy?"

"She's backstage, getting ready," Pete said, arms around Joe and Andy's necks. "Since we're performing tonight."

"Your new single, Don't Shake the Walls Tonight, released a couple of weeks ago," Anonymous said, "was a complete change of direction for the band. Tell us about that."

"Badly phrased question," Suzy said.

Andy said, "The whole album, Albuquerque, is like the single, balladic and personal. Fall Out Boy needed to record this album, for Suzy, and for ourselves. After four years apart, we couldn't just make the same kind of music again."

"Pete? You've done it all, in terms of personal life, marriages and divorces, starlets and scandals. Are you planning on coming out in the future, because there can't be much left?" Anonymous asked.

"Don't, Pete." Suzy said, and she could see Andy tightening his grip on Pete.

"Problem is, Donald." Pete said. "That you haven't done your research. I've tried gay sex a few times, and that's on the record. I'm not sure how much more I can come out than that, without actually identifying as queer, which I don't. I don't actually like boy sex very much."

"But what about Suzy?" Anonymous asked. "You can't honestly say you're not gay if you're with him?"

"Oh, shit," Suzy said.

In a flurry of tuxedoed movement, Pete went for the interviewer and Andy managed to intercept, grabbing his arms and wrestling him aside.

Joe--lovely, weird Joe--snarled, "Please respect the raw honesty with which Suzy approaches her music and her life," as security guards appeared, blocking the camera and bustling Joe, Andy and Pete away.

The camera cut suddenly to another section of the red carpet, somewhere without drama, and Suzy let out a long, shaky breath.

"And that's why I won't do red carpets," Suzy said to herself.

Ten minutes later, the dressing room door opened, and a phalanx of security guards escorted Joe, Andy and Pete in.

Joe still looked angry, Andy worried and Pete defensive, and Pete glanced at the TV screen and said, "Oh, fuck. Did you see what happened?"

Suzy stood up, tugging unhappily at her miniskirt. "Trying to assault the interviewer is never the right answer, no matter what the question is."

Pete threw himself into one of the make up chairs. "I disagree. Sometimes, the only right response is a really solid fist in the face."

Joe shook his head. "In terms of exposure, Pete, that was classic. I kind of wish you'd done some damage, but then you would have been arrested, and we couldn't have played."

Andy pulled his bowtie off. "Which we have to do in, um, a bit over an hour. I don't care if you're both playing guitar in monkey suits, but I'm not drumming in this gear."

Waiting to go onstage, watching the cameras panning across the packed stadium, Suzy said, "It might have been good to done some kind of prep for this."

Pete hugged her from behind, and she could feel the tension jumping under his skin. "We're good, we've rehearsed this track into oblivion, you're warmed up, your voice sounds fucking fantastic, and you might just have the hottest legs ever seen."

"And you tried to assault a journalist," Suzy said.

"Unsuccessful doesn't count," Pete said. "If I'd broken his nose and my hand, it would be a drama."

"It just might have been smart to have done some live gigs before this," Suzy said. "After more than four years break."

Pete squeezed her ass, through her tights, and Joe said, "No, we can see that. Don't."

The stage manager opened the door, and signaled them through, backstage, to where their gear was set up, waiting.

Long seconds, standing in the dark, listening to the noise from the auditorium, and Whoopi Goldberg's amplified voice said, "Now, Fall Out Boy, performing Don't Shake the Walls Tonight, and if it doesn't make you all cry, then you've got no souls."

The roar shook the auditorium, as the lights went up. Suzy could feel Pete, right in close beside her, and Joe was in her peripheral vision. Behind her, Andy tapped the opening bar, and it was all going to be fine, because she couldn't see anyone anyway, not with the lights in her face, and she knew she could do it.

"Listening to strangers fight," Suzy sang. "They're telling the truth, more than I ever did to you. Left it too late, hid it too long. Some distances can't be measured in miles, some changes can't be undone. The city's hollow, and I'm a pebble. (Don't shake the walls tonight.)"

At the end, Joe's fingering on his acoustic finishing the song, Suzy managed to remember to step back from the microphone and duck her head in acknowledgment, Pete's hand on her shoulder.

The lights went down, and Joe was right beside her, holding her too, while stage techs ran around, lifting guitars off them, rushing them offstage.

In the dressing room, a makeup tech dashed at her. "Two minutes," the tech said. "And you're all due in your seats at the next break."

The usher led them into the front of the auditorium, during the next commercial break, to the seats that fillers had been occupying for them, and Suzy held on tight to Pete and Andy's hands. People sitting in the rows immediately around them applauded, and familiar faces from the past stood up, Brendan and Spencer waving and jumping up and down two rows back, Gabe and William further along.

The ten second warning flashed on the main screen, and Suzy sat down in a hurry, deeply glad of the tights when she felt the warm seat on her ass and thighs. Warm seat and bare skin might have been more than she could take.

Knowing the video for Sugar was nominated was one thing, but it hadn't occurred to Suzy that meant that the when the nominees were read out, the first three seconds of the video, with the footage of Pete's hand sliding across her sweaty belly, would be played in high definition on a forty foot screen behind the presenters.

She covered her face with her hands, while Pete grinned and waved, knowing that they'd be zoomed in on.

Pete whooped and grabbed Suzy's hand, pulling her to her feet, and fuck, he was dragging her out of the seats, after Joe and Andy, up onto the stage, the director they'd worked with bounding up the other flight of steps.

On the stage, Pete and Andy's arms around her, Suzy turned her head so she couldn't see the opening sequence of the clip running on the main screen again.

The director said, "I'd like to thank Fall Out Boy, who were wonderful to work with, especially Andy for living in such an amazing location, and Suzy and Pete for providing me with the hottest twenty seconds of footage I've ever shot." He turned his head to look at Pete, mouth still close to the microphone. "If you two ever decide to make a sex tape, just give me a call."

"Thanks," Pete called out, over the applause from the crowd, then they were being pushed off the stage, ready for the next award.

Suzy stumbled through the evening after that. Fall Out Boy picked up Best Rock Album, and Pete managed to accept the award without swearing or offending anyone, but missed out on Best Rock Performance.

When Justin Timberlake introduced the nominees for Song of the Year, and a fragment of the video screened, Pete put his arm around Suzy's shoulders and whispered, "You all ready to win Song of the Year?"

"It's not going to win," Suzy whispered, as the nominees were read out.

"Yellow Girl, written by Suzy Monroe."

"Go!" Pete said, pulling Suzy to her feet, standing and applauding, and Suzy pushed past Joe and Andy, and out into the aisle, then on trembling knees up the steps.

The presenter handed her the golden gramophone, and Suzy tried not to drop it, despite shaking hands.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much. There's something I need clarify about Yellow Girl." The noise from the crowd quieted down, and Suzy smiled, looking towards where she knew Pete was sitting. "There's a mistake in it. I am his sunshine, and I am his moon in the sky."

Pete met her, running up the aisle, as she came down the steps, picking her up, Grammy still in her hands, and carrying her back to her row. Joe and Andy were waiting, to take the Grammy from her hands when Pete put her back on her feet and kissed her thoroughly.

In the limo, going to the Decaydance after-party, Suzy sprawled across the seat. "Fuck, it's good to be out of those stupid clothes."

Pete's hand squeezed her jean-clad thigh. "The skirt had its attractions."

"Like I want the whole world to be my freaking gynecologist," Suzy said.

"Don't," Andy said tiredly. "No."

"Hey, Andy," Suzy said. "You have a good tattoo artist out here in LA? Someone completely private and discreet?"

"Sure," Andy said. "Jeff does my work when I'm out here, and he's an honest man. Why?"

"I think it's time Pete and I got tattoos. I want a daffodil, on my belly."

The limo was silent, apart from the hum of the late night LA traffic, until Pete said, "Fuck, Suzy, did you just say what I think you said?"

"Yeah," Suzy said. "I did."

Pete cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded choked when he said, "So, Joe and Andy, before you both fly out of here, and assuming we can find a tame judge, think you could make time to be our witnesses?"

When Suzy lifted her head, Joe was grinning at her, and Andy was looking confused. "What happened to never marrying him?" Andy asked.

"Turns out it was the idea of another fucking Wentz wedding I couldn't take," Suzy said. "So we're getting married in private and telling no one. You can't tell anyone, either of you."

Joe said, "Um, the missus?"

"Hint to her," Pete said. "Make vague references to how wonderfully romantic it was, and how you now understand about commitment being such a private and intimate thing, and buy her something with a diamond in it, or a collectible guitar if she swings that way. Just don't actually tell her."

"In that case, yeah, we'll sign the papers," Joe said. "And Suzy?"

"Yeah?"

"Congratulations on making him do something low key, though after tonight's effort from you, I don't think he's the only one here who makes grand gestures."

END


End file.
